


The Arc of Conversation

by jvshduns



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe - Small Town, Coming of Age, M/M, Slow Build, Summer, Tyler is grey-romantic, except that coming of age happens at 21
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2018-12-09 16:21:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11672733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jvshduns/pseuds/jvshduns
Summary: Not a single song had warned aspiring musician Tyler Joseph that falling in love would be the hardest thing he would ever go through, even if he wouldn't really notice that he was falling.Mainly because not a single song had ever been written about Josh Dun.





	1. Chapter 1

Sometimes it felt like a curse.

A rather dull, uninteresting curse at that. _You shall not love._

Tyler Joseph was, of course, capable of many different forms of love; he loved his mother warmly, tenderly, and his brothers and sister in a rougher, steadier sort of way, like the trees gratefully adored the roots that grounded them, and the rocks that cared for the sea so intensely they kept it from spilling. His father he loved quietly, yet deeply. But he had never in his life experienced the elusive romantic love, that ‘wear your heart on your sleeve for another person to grab and bend and break’ sort of love.

Nor did he want to.

The evil witch might have cursed him with all the power she could muster from the depths of the underworld, but it made for a very useless spell when the recipient didn’t care much for romance to begin with. 

Unlike the rest of the people his age, who remembered Snow White as the first Disney movie they ever watched during their kindergarten days, Tyler gave that title to Sleeping Beauty. He knew the plot all too well, and throughout every retelling –whether a book, a play, or a movie– Tyler found Aurora consistently and agonizingly _dumb_ , marrying a man she barely knew when she could have lived a much more interesting life in the forest. What a waste of time that story was. 

Ironically, Tyler’s relatives and peers seemed to think his twenty-one years of single life were, too, a waste of time, which annoyed Tyler to no end. His life should not be graded based on how many hands he had held, or how many times his lips had kissed someone else’s, not when he had achieved so much more, like scholarships, basketball championships, or even managing to say alive for another day.

So, with all due respect to His Highness and the crown, screw the prince. Screw the castle and the kingdom. Yes, going after that was perfectly fine, but Tyler couldn’t care less about any of it. He had decided he would live the rest of his life in the forest, with nothing but love in his heart despite not being _in_ love. He would love every single tree and every last animal that visited his tiny wooden home when he sang. 

Some people understood this, some others didn’t. Mark, Tyler’s best friend from his childhood, was originally the latter, but he’d done a conscious effort for Tyler’s sake to become one of those who understood. 

“Maybe you’re an aromantic,” Mark announced once, reading out loud from a bookmarked link in his Blackberry as if it were a doctor’s clipboard and not an excerpt from a rather misinformed and outdated website.

“Aromantic,” Tyler repeated.

He said it like this, “Aro _man_ tic.” The word felt like it belonged far, far away from his mouth.

Putting a name to what he felt –or, failed to feel– had barely managed to satisfy Tyler for the time being since it had become somewhat tangible, even if he wasn’t sure he completely related after all. It was like putting a face to his demons and discovering they weren’t demonic looking, or even his at all. Aromanticism seemed too far fetched, too someone else’s demon.

Still, the curse haunted him. Once, when he was seventeen, he thought about looking for an antidote, something that would break the spell. He gave up shortly after, however, since he was not thrilled by the idea of having to wait for his true love to find him and kiss the curse away. Waiting seemed like a very depressing way to waste a life.

Tyler did not wait, not for a second. And yet, a fucking prince appeared.

 

*

 

Not going to college was never an option. It was a very frequent thought, but never a real option. Tyler chose a major as someone would choose what to eat for dinner and gave it his best shot, and after three years of a somewhat steady routine, Tyler became comfortably used to his life in college. He barely missed any classes, he had tanned to perfection from all the walking and spring-breaking, and for the past year he had consistently remembered to eat at least twice a day, and to only drink on a full stomach.

As it approached, the shadow of graduation grew taller and scarier, until Tyler could barely see his own. All that was left for him to do was wait for the current semester’s final grades, sign up for three classes he had been too lazy to add to his eighth semester’s schedule, and he would be done. Six months. 

When the semester was over, after every last professor had posted the final grades, he came to the conclusion that he had nothing to do during the summer after his junior year. His parents, a two and a half hours drive away from his school, assumed he would be coming back home for the summer, because Tyler hadn’t told them he wasn’t. But going back to his hometown, a tiny excuse of a village in Ohio next to Lake Erie, made him feel like he was put in some sort of trance, a feeling too slippery to put into words. It was as if life occurred different there, slower, and he wasn’t sure if it was in a good or bad way. And since he couldn’t come up with an excuse, he would spend what was left of June and the entirety of July and August trying to figure that out, crammed in his childhood home.

Last year he managed to avoid going back because Jenna, his closest friend in college, had invited him to her family’s lake house for a while, and he spent the rest of the summer working at a bar near campus to finish paying for a crappy, yet somewhat cool 1998 Jeep Wrangler a friend of his was selling. 

That was how the very same day he received his last grade, after a quiet and uneventful drive home from Columbus, he ended up parked in front of his parents’ house with all his belongings in the Jeep’s truck and a funny feeling in his stomach. The humid air stuck to the back of his neck and made his upper lip sweat.

Willoughby, Ohio was almost pleasant during winter, lovely, some would call it with its small town streets covered in white, shiny snow and hot cocoa signs hung outside every other family-owned restaurant. But summer meant a low temperature of 68 ºF and a high temperature of Insanely Freaking Hot ºF. Today seemed to be one of the latter days, and Tyler was absolutely not in the mood.

“Just, whatever you do, don’t make your parents upset. Don’t be a burden,” he told himself out loud. He shook his face and hands and hopped out of the car.

The doorbell hadn’t even finished its small-town-doorbell-song when his mother threw open the door and engulfed him in a hug, his smiling dad close behind her ready to help him with his bags. “My baby, my beautiful baby boy,” she cooed, as if Tyler were her only son, or the youngest, and he was neither.

“Hey, mom.” He smiled despite the weather, despite the long ride home. The world could stop spinning for all he cared when he hugged his mother.

He awkwardly side-hugged his dad and he pat Tyler’s back in return.

“Jay won’t be back from camp until July, Zack leaves next week with his friends and Madison’s... actually not doing much this summer,” his father launched into conversation immediately. Tyler wasn’t sure if he was filling him in or mentally getting his ducks in a row. Or, ducklings.

“Is Jay liking camp?” Tyler asked, leaning against the living room door frame once they were all inside. He had a hard time adapting to the smell of humid wood all the houses near the lake had, a smell he had to get used to every time he visited, and then seemed to forget.

“Oh, you know your brother,” it was his mother who answered. “He’s easy to keep happy, and being with all his basketball buddies sure makes him happy. He just sent us a postcard last week, you should listen to him talk about his little adventures.”

Her voice carried that Willoughby accent that was neither here nor there, that sounded as eastern as it did northern. Tyler used to think it sounded out of place, like it didn’t belong anywhere. But it undoubtedly belonged in his mother’s voice.

“Is Zack still working at Oliver’s?”

Nobody in Willoughby could be called a local if they didn’t go to Oliver’s to hear the town’s hottest gossip at least once a fortnight. The former owner, Oliver, had named the place after his late father, William (it was called Willy’s up until the late 80’s). When Oliver died, it was his son, Jackson, who changed the diner’s name to Oliver’s. It was safe to assume that the baby in Jackson’s wife’s belly would later rename the place Jack’s. However unsteady its name, Oliver’s was unquestionably the town’s favorite landmark. Tyler was actually fonder of Taco Local down on Glenn Avenue, but he wasn’t about to admit that, not unless he wanted to be the subject of Oliver’s whispering and murmuring 

“He’s there right now, you should go say hi,” his father said with a tinge of pride in his voice. He had also worked at Oliver’s –Willy’s– during the summers when he was Zack’s age, and so had Tyler. He hoped it wouldn’t become a family tradition.

He did think stopping by the dinner to see his brother would be a good idea since he had nothing to do and the humid smell of the house had not yet settled in his nose. The hot summer air assaulted Tyler again as he made his way back to the Jeep, and he was suddenly yearning for an ice pop, the sweetest kind.

The Josephs lived right by the Lake, and downtown Willoughby was a good ten minutes away by car. Tyler leaned across the front seats to open the passenger window as well as his own before turning on the engine and blasting the stereo. Happy with the way the reunion with his parents had gone, he allowed himself to indulge in the ride this time.

 

*

 

Oliver’s entrance was twice the size of any other establishment’s because Oliver’s was twice as big as any of them. Or that’s what it felt like, anyway, since at least one fourth of town was there at any given time. There were a few faces Tyler didn’t recognize, but the majority he did. He had played with some of these people’s sons and daughters in grade school, had served most, if not all of them when he worked behind that exact same counter. The air smelled like fries and beef and tabletop cleaner and Tyler sighed.

“Ty-lo!” Zack’s smile could be heard in his voice as he approached him. “It’s so good to see you, man.”

Tyler hugged his brother because he could. He looked so much older than the last time he’d seen him, back in December when he had been unsuccessfully trying to grow a mustache; it would look like the maturity it took for him to admit facial hair was just not for him ended up adding a few years to his face, which suit him perfectly.

“How’s it going?” Tyler couldn’t avoid a smile of his own, the sort that made his eyes squint.

“Listen to this, I just found a guy that agreed to help me record a demo,” Zack announced, his hand still on Tyler’s shoulder.

“No way, that’s sick. How’d that happen?”

“Hold on,” and to his manager, he shouted, “Hey, boss, is the new kid here yet? I think it’s time for my break.”

The manager mumbled an unintelligible reply with a pen in his mouth just as Zack’s replacement came through the back door, his hands behind his back as he tied his apron. He covered his messy blue hair with a net and set to work in complete silence.

“So, the demo guy,” Zack continued, guiding Tyler to an empty table, his apron and hairnet still on. His name tag read _Oliver’s Zack._ “I was working here, actually, you know, singing as usual when a guy came up to me and went ‘that’s a lovely voice you got there’, which I found creepy since lovely’s not the word I’d use to describe it.”

All of Tyler’s siblings had an unusual way of talking that captivated Tyler, even if he knew he talked like that as well, as narcissistic as that might sound. They all talked as if they had already said everything they wanted to say inside their heads and were just assembling and reciting it in a way others would understand, leaving no thought behind because every detail and every thought were crucial to the story. That’s how Zack told Tyler what had happened with the producer, as he called him. Tyler doubted he was an actual producer, but he kept that to himself.

“Zack!” Came the manager’s voice, this time clear and loud without the pen to muffle it. “Your break’s not until three, kid, get back to work!

“Dang it, busted,” he was still smiling. “I’ll finish telling you at home, yeah?”

Zack left to help the other guy with one of the three trays he had been trying to carry at once, shot Tyler a look that said “what can you do about it?” and made his way through the sea of customers, delivering cheesecakes here and sandwiches there. Tyler knew that, as he served, he was trying to catch some of the secrets and gossip being exchanged.

Tyler considered ordering the ice pop he had thought about earlier, but found himself not longer craving it.

He made his way back home in silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a single song ever warned ME writing a fic would be this hard. I'm currently looking for a beta reader, the more meticulous the better, so hit me up at my tumblr (jvshduns) if you're interested. 
> 
> This story would be nothing without my good judy, EncOREO. She's helped me so much it's embarrassing, to be honest. Make sure to check her writing here on ao3. 
> 
> Finally, the title is a line from Charlie Lim's There Is No Love.
> 
> Thanks SO much for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

The last thing Tyler unpacked from the Jeep was the small keyboard his parents got him for his eighteenth birthday, the only thing he had bothered to wrap and pack properly. He set it in his room and stared at it for a while. When he couldn’t look at it any longer, he went downstairs for a glass of juice. 

“What are you doing this summer, Ty?” Madison asked from the living room where she lay on the couch watching TV. Her cheeks were no longer as round as a kid ’ s, and her questions had changed from why’s to when’s and who's and where’s when she turned thirteen.

“Not much,” he said, both because he knew she wasn’t up to anything either and because he truly had no plans. 

“I’m bored out of my mind. All my friends are at a dumb camp, but I don’t really like the idea of camping, we could have just as much fun here, and we wouldn’t have to sleep all in one room,” she told him, sure he would understand her. He did.

A second later her attention snapped back to whatever show she was watching.

“I know, I hate them too,” but she was no longer listening. 

There was no juice in the fridge, so Tyler drank a glass of milk, then went back upstairs and stared at his keyboard some more. His mind had been full of ideas back in college .  He would think of melodies and song lyrics during class or when he was just about to fall asleep, promising himself he would write it all down whenever he got the chance, but he never did. Now, of course, he was blocked. Blocked and sweaty and alone. 

“I have to go to the school to drop some papers off, do you need anything?” His mother stood in the doorway with a hand on the doorknob and the other holding her purse, ready to leave. She was a middle school teacher, and Tyler could think of a thousand things he would rather end up doing than lecturing twelve - year olds 40 hours a week. 

“No, I’m just- I think I’ll go visit Mark,” he finished lamely. For a second he struggled to remember he was not in highschool anymore. 

“Say hi for me,” she had always liked Mark and knew he was nothing but a good influence in Tyler’s life. The money also helped, but he was sure she would like Mark just as much even if he weren’t rich.

 

*****   
  


Willoughby didn’t have a poor area and it certainly didn’t have a rich area .  The whole town gave out a vibe of having been built on old, good money. This was best represented by the breweries, warehouses and factories that were scattered here and there, buildings around which later the suburban areas had grown like a plague. Most of the factories, like Kottler, were still running and produced a big part of the town’s income, which was later spent on ridiculous town events and fairs. Other older warehouses had been either abandoned mid-construction or after a bad bankrupt, and it was one of the latter that Mark’s father had bought him as a highschool graduation gift.

There were rich people, and then there was Mark, son of the owner of five of Willoughby’s most successful breweries and factories, and a couple more in nearby towns. That’s not why Tyler had befriended him, it should be noted. 

Mark turned his gift warehouse into a spacious, bright loft, renovated and furnished by an interior decorator with an Italian or Greek last name that had driven all the way from Cincinnati for that one job. Now, Mark spent his holidays and every other weekend in that loft despite studying in Cleveland, where he had another similar loft to stay during the weekdays. The reason Mark was so keen on spending his free time in that shabby little town was a mystery to Tyler. 

“outside,” Tyler texted Mark. He had sent him a text just to confirm his presence in town and didn’t really ask to be invited before grabbing his keys and driving there. 

The whole building was Mark’s, really, so Tyler could just have walked in. Instead, he sounded the horn until the automatic gate opened up, a mockingly exasperated Mark on the other side ready to welcome Tyler.

“Someday, my boy, you’re gonna ring the doorbell like a normal person,” was his way of greeting him. He shouted it as Tyler parked the Jeep inside the makeshift garage, his Willoughby accent thicker than anybody else’s he knew.

“Someday, indeed,” Tyler replied after killing the engine and stepping out of the car. 

“I’m so jealous you get to drive this monstrosity,” Mark sighed , envious, sending a nasty look to his own car, a sleek black BMW parked next to Tyler’s old truck.

“What are you talking about? Your car’s like, 2011.”

“Nothing’ll ever beat a classic Wrangler. Everybody knows that.”

“Well, that’s true,” Tyler joked, faking pity. 

“Shut up,” Mark laughed out, shoving Tyler. 

Turned out Mark was on a mission of watching eighteen movies he had rented in the past months from Blockbuster and forgotten to return, which he seemed unconcerned about. Tyler was sure he would have some sort of anxiety attack if he missed a Blockbuster movie return for even one day, let alone eighteen of them from several months back.

They watched a couple of movies in the living room. First, The Dukes of Hazard because, well, it was The Dukes of Hazard and they were twenty year old boys, and then Big Fish, which Tyler had never seen. They ate pizza and drank craft beer –and Did Not talk about the love scenes– until their eyelids felt heavy. 

Tyler dreamt of daffodils and wedding rings.

 

*****

 

Contrary to what his friends would guess, Tyler’s favorite time of the day was between 7 and 9 in the morning. The feeling of a whole day ahead of him, even though he once found it unbearable, now managed to relax him with a single promise: he could start over each morning. So that morning he did. 

He forgot about everything he didn’t like about Willoughby and enjoyed the tingly feeling in his skin from being completely exposed to sunlight, from head to toe. Last night he had left the curtains of the tall, tall windows open to be woken up exactly like that, to be able to curl like a cat on the white covers of Mark’s guest room and bathe in sun for as long as Mark kept snoring next door. He stretched and practically purred for a good half hour before deciding to make some coffee, which he rarely ever did. 

The living room was even sunnier than the guest room during the day, which Tyler didn’t think would cause him as much joy as it did. He crossed the dining area and spent a ridiculously long time deciding on a Nespresso flavor before choosing Ciocattino, just because he didn’t know what on Earth that meant and he felt like exploring, even if that only meant trying a flavor he’d never tried before. 

As he waited for the coffee machine to serve his drink, he crossed the dining and living area to fetch his phone from between the covers of his unmade bed. 

“hungover as heCK. miss u,” read a message from Jenna, sent fourteen minutes ago. He caught himself smiling as he grabbed his coffee cup and settled in the living room. 

“my first day away and u’re drinking already. shame. miss u too,” he typed back. It was true, he missed her deeply.

Ciocattino turned out to be a fancy way of branding mocha, but that didn’t steal away any of its rich flavor. Tyler found himself sighing after the first taste. He cupped his hands around the drink and looked around for some sort of magazine or book, just something to keep his hands and mind busy really, but Mark had nothing of the sort lying around since he was not a middle class housewife, so instead, Tyler’s sight rested on a set of pictures that decorated the wall, all similar in hues and tones. There was one of a clear sky with a single cloud in the lop left corner, another of a building covered in vines and a few flowers here and there. Right in the heart of that arrangement Tyler found his favorite. He stared at the picture of a solitary boat taken from above for a few moments before he noticed what was so captivating about it; beneath the water’s smooth surface, what appeared to be dozens of sharks swarmed in all directions, apparently unbothered by the boat. The only man on board kept rowing, and the sharks kept swimming, and Tyler kept staring.

He got another text from Jenna just as Mark opened his bedroom door and emerged like a ghost. 

“Who got you smiling like that?” He teased. 

“Jenna. You’ve met her,” his eyes were glued to his phone as he pressed the keys of its tiny keyboard in an almost professional manner. 7777-444-222-55.

“So, is there something there, or…” Tyler didn’t mind Mark’s question, although coming from anybody else would have made him feel extremely uncomfortable. Mark meant well, and it had been him, after all, the first person Tyler had gone to find out if there was something wrong with him.

“No. There’s nothing anywhere,” he kept typing. 

“Gotcha,” and they dropped the subject. 

 

-

 

When Mark remembered it was Tyler’s first week back home, he insisted on breakfast at Oliver’s. Tyler argued he had been there already. 

“Yeah, for like, half a second. Don’t get all foreigner on me, you’re still a local. You gotta respect your town’s traditions, man.”

He won the argument because he was Mark.

They drove there in the Jeep, per Mark’s request, and asked for a table in the middle. Nobody went there for a corner table.

Zack was not there that day, but the guy with the blue hair who had been working with him yesterday was, his silent demeanor clearly differentiating him from the rest of the people there that morning, who seemed to be in a contest of which table exchanged the most words in a minute. 

Tyler wanted to ask Mark who the new kid was.

“So, to honor the tradition,” Mark began, already leaning closer to Tyler in a secretive way. “You remember Nichols, from school? He was one or two years younger than us.”

He paused and waited for Tyler to nod. And to add a little bit of drama, because he was Mark. 

“Well, so apparently his parents caught him making out with a guy or they found another guy’s clothes in his room or whatever, so he decided to, like, run away and get his own place here in Willoughby. Rumor has it he’s now selling drugs there, or something. Just last week there was a party there and the cops showed up. The  _ cops _ . Actual Willoughby cops. I didn’t even know we had cops!”

Just as he said that, Zack came rushing through the front door and spotted his brother at once. He glanced at the counter worriedly and made his way to where Tyler and Mark sat. Mark was still waiting for a reaction to his story. 

“Hey, you left me waiting, you didn’t come home yesterday,” Zack said accusingly, raising three fingers in Mark’s direction as greeting.

“Yeah, I’m sorry, I ended up crashing at Mark’s. But, hey, I still wanna know more about your demo.”

“It’s okay, pick me up tonight and we’re even,” he said, glancing at the counter again.

“Tonight? You’re working a double shift?”

“Yeah, long story. But you’ll pick me up?” Tyler nodded. “I’m out at ten, but–“

“Joseph! You can kiss your brother later, get to work!” It was the manager, who had appeared near the kitchen out of thin air, it would seem. 

“ _ Dang _ it,” he whispered, and then, a dozen decibels louder, “Two orders of pancakes coming right up!”

“I’m deaf! You deafened me!” Mark complained dramatically, his hands against his ears.

“Sorry, it was either kill or be killed,” he apologized with a little tilt of his head toward his boss. “You’re getting pancakes though, I hope you’re hungry.”

And he was gone. Tyler watched him as the manager reprimanded him, while Zack barely nodded and went to the back to change into his uniform. Blue-haired boy watched him as well, Tyler noticed.

It took Tyler a couple of seconds to realize Mark was coughing and clearing his throat.

“What?” 

“So? What do you think of my story!” His eyes were wide, just as though he were very distressed.  Mark was a  _ character _ . “I held onto it yesterday just so I could tell you all about it here.”

“Oh, right. Cops here, that’s nuts.” Then he said what he had really wanted to say. “Who was the guy?”

“Nichols, from school.  _ Gah _ , I don’t remember his name, but you’ve met him, I’m sure.”

“Yeah, no, I mean the other guy. Lover boy,” it was hard for Tyler to imagine a boy from his high school involved with Jamie Nichols like that. Unlike Mark, he did remember his name. 

“Oh, God only knows. But I’m guessing he was either home schooled or not from around here because nobody knows who it was.”

_ What a horrible thing to be _ , Tyler thought.  _ New to a town like Willoughby. _

After that they ate their pancakes in silence. Tyler was busy trying to repress a feeling of regret at having decided to spend the whole summer there, and Mark was occupied both gobbling his pancakes and trying to catch the conversation between the two ladies in the table to his right. Tyler knew both of them, so he smiled at them when they caught Mark snooping. 

  
  


Mark gasped when Tyler threw the keys to the Jeep at him and climbed in the passenger seat. He drove them silently back to his loft, idly palming the velvet smooth texture of the wheel and listening to the hum of the engine, and Tyler realized he had done the same when he bought it, so he said nothing. 

The Jeep received a longer goodbye than Tyler when Mark got off at his place.

 

*****

 

For the next couple of hours, Tyler laid on his back on the floor of his room, the keyboard next to him and a summer-hot arm over his eyes. He could hear cicadas outside his window, and he thought about that sound for a moment, the familiarity of it. “Write something about the cicadas,” he ordered himself. “Write something.”

He went outside instead.

If you walked North in a straight line from the Joseph’s backyard door, you would reach the lake without encountering any obstacles. You would be in the lake in less than a minute. Tyler grabbed an apple from the kitchen and walked North for 48 seconds, checked the ground  for mud, and sat down. The cicadas were louder outside, but not loud enough to inspire Tyler to write about them, apparently. 

“Why are you here all by yourself?” Madison appeared behind him, her footsteps soft and silent. She moved to stand beside him and looked out at Lake Erie. A breeze of hot air made her hair flutter gently.

“It was too hot inside,” Tyler said, shuffling to the side for her to sit next to him.

“It’s too hot outside,” she complained. 

“Meh,” Tyler bit his apple and Madison sat down. 

A boat made its slow way across the lake, and Tyler wondered if that was legal, it had been a while since he last saw a boat sailing so far away from the docks. 

“Tyler, do you think I’m too young to have a boyfriend?” Madison was pulling leaves of grass from the ground and gathering them in a small pile by her feet. He looked at her hands working for a couple of seconds as he considered her question. 

“I wouldn’t say that. Do you have a boyfriend?” 

“No, but I would like to. Mom says I’m too young, though,” she no longer mumbled her words, Tyler noticed, like she’d done for so long.

“Hm,” he hummed, and bit into his apple again. “If there is someone you like, I think you should ignore what mom says and just spend time with them, see what happens.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No, I don’t really like any girl at the moment.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?” She asked, without missing a beat. 

Tyler did miss a beat.

“No, I don’t like any boys either,” he granted, thinking of Jamie Nichols. “Do I look like someone who would have a boyfriend to you?”

Madison didn’t look up at him, but she frowned at the pile of grass leaves on the ground. Some of them were beginning to be blown away by the wind.

“Why, should you look different if you liked boys?” 

Whatever Tyler was going to say next was interrupted by a firework that went off in the neighbor's’ house. It was far too early in the summer for people to be lighting fireworks, far too early in the day, for that matter. 

“I just don’t think much about relationships,” he admitted after all the noise and whooping from next door had died down. 

“Why?”

Tyler considered telling her that he thought he was aromantic, that Mark thought so, too. He could have told her that he just wasn’t interested in anyone at the moment, and that he probably would never be. He could have also told her that life wasn’t all about who you were with, but rather what you did with the people you were with. Instead, what came out was:

“Do you think I’ll ever get married?” 

Madison snorted.

“Tyler, out of all of us, I think you’ll be the first one to get married. You’re a romantic.” 

She said it like this, “A  _ romantic _ .” Tyler asked her why she thought that.

“You sit here and stare at the lake by yourself, you write songs–”

“Not love songs,” he argued. 

“You. Write. Songs,” her face was cracked by a well-meaning smile that reached her eyes and her voice. “All songs are about love. Or, lack of love, I guess.”

Tyler had no answer to that. Definitely not too young to have a boyfriend. 

 

*****

 

At 9:45 that night, Tyler left the house to pick up his brother from work. The diner was completely dark by the time he got there, the only light the permanent glow of the  _ Oliver’s _ sign on top of the building. Tyler had worked there, so he knew the employees went out through the back door at night after closing up, so he drove the Jeep to the back and killed the engine.

After five minutes, when the clock hit 10 o’clock, Tyler’s anxiety got the best of him, or perhaps it was the unbearable heat inside the car. Whichever the reason, he got out of the Jeep and walked up to Oliver’s back door, hoping he could hear something that indicated that his brother hadn’t just left without him. From inside, to his relief, came the soft hum of a radio and some thudding and shuffling sounds.

He sighed and sat on the small step that led to the back door, but not a second later it burst open, making Tyler stand right back up. In the door, silhouetted by the light that now flooded the once dark alley, was the boy with the blue hair. He was carrying an oversized black trash bag with both hands, his uniform still on, complete with a name tag that read  _ Oliver’s _ , and below that,  _ Josh _ .

“Hey, what, uh… what can I do for you?” he asked, his voice weary.

“I’m here for Zack,” Tyler announced, except it came out as a question. 

“Oh, are you the brother?”  _ Oliver’s Josh  _ said in a much calmer voice, setting the bag on the floor. Tyler hoped he wasn’t expecting a long talk.

“Yeah. So, is he around?” 

“Yeah, it’s his turn to clean the bathrooms,” he indicated the inside of the diner with a tilt of his head. He was now smiling. “It’s Tyler, right?”

“Yes,” he replied hesitantly.

“I’m Josh,” he said, pointing at the name tag on his chest, and Tyler pretended he was reading it for the first time. 

Tyler had nothing else to say to Josh, he found, so there was a moment of complete silence between the two. Suddenly, Tyler became very aware of the heat, and noticed that Josh seemed unbothered, untouched by it. He wondered if his skin would be cool to the touch, at least it seemed that way. When he emerged from that heat-induced thought, Josh was looking at him, a curious look on his face that made him uneasy. 

“You’re not at all how I pictured you,” Josh finally said. It took a moment for Tyler to process what he was saying, why he suddenly felt as if this were the beginning of a blind date he had not known anything about.

“Does Zack talk about me that much?”

“Not  _ that _ much, it’s just that we spend so much time together in here, some topics tend to come up more than once.” 

Josh picked up the comically large trash bag and began walking to the side of the building where the trash containers were, leaving Tyler with no choice but to follow him, given that he was still talking.

“He told me you were in college, and that you rarely visited. I pictured you as a jock, a frat boy or something,” he flung the bag easily and dumped it in the container, the small smile on his lips at odds with the whole scene. 

“How do you know I’m not a frat boy?” What he really wanted to say was,  _ “Hey, speaking of my brother, perhaps it’s time you go fetch him for me, it feels really creepy to have a conversation in the dead of the night next to a trash container, thank you.” _

Josh walked back to the employees ’ entrance, so Tyler followed him again.

“Are you? You don’t strike me as the type,” they were back where they began, except this time Josh’s hands were empty, which meant he had nothing else to do outside. 

“I’m not.”

Josh smiled, big and kid-like this time. He had perfect teeth.

“Knew it.”

Before things could get any more awkward, which wouldn’t have been hard at all, Zack stepped outside too, his own –smaller– black bag ready to be dumped. 

“Ty-lo, you’re here early.”

“You told me to be here at ten,” Josh looked at his watch but said nothing. Tyler thought he would leave now that his brother was there, but he didn’t move. 

“Did I? I must’ve forgotten to tell you it was my time to clean the bathrooms. Whoops. I’m done anyway, let me just dump this and I’ll be right back,” he hurried to the side of the building.

“So, Tyler, I’ll see you around, yeah?” Josh said as Zack went back inside to grab his things. Tyler looked up from the floor at Josh’s face, barely illuminated by the light that came from inside the diner.

“Yeah,” he breathed out, because there was nothing else he could have said. Josh smiled at him again –he was all smiles, smiles, smiles– and finally disappeared through the door. 

On the ride back home, Zack excitedly finished the demo story and told Tyler he could feature in it as well, and Tyler fantasized about people knowing his name. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple of comments/disclaimers:
> 
> 1\. This fic takes place in summer 2009 (which I find hilarious).  
> 2\. I don't really know if Jenna drinks or not??? So I'm sorry if having her hungover in this fic is out of character, but after all this is nothing but fiction.  
> 3\. Same thing goes for Mark, who I think I butchered for comedy purposes here.
> 
> Thanks so much for being patient with this story, I hope you all enjoy watching Tyler figure out some things about himself. 
> 
> Finally, I'm currently looking for a beta reader, the more meticulous the better ;)) so hit me up at my tumblr (jvshduns) if you're interested!


	3. Chapter 3

After a week back in Willoughby, Tyler finally gave in to the nagging feeling that being inside the house all day was most likely wrong, so one morning he grabbed an old swimsuit from one of the drawers he had not emptied when he moved to Columbus, and didn’t think much about it as he made his way to the local –and only– public pool.

The oppressive heat made him walk almost subconsciously to the ice cream truck parked in front of the pool. He ordered a lemon ice-pop and ate it all right there, before it even began to soften. He tried to smile at the ice cream guy as he left, but it made him feel awkward.

The pool was empty except for a big guy doing laps as if his life depended on it, and a girl too tiny to be a lifeguard sitting on the high chair, flipping a magazine, and biting the end of one of her braids. Her red swimsuit, though, read “lifeguard”, despite her not looking older than 15. She looked up when Tyler opened the gate, but quickly went back to her reading.

Tyler sat down at the edge of the pool and used his feet to disturb the perfectly smooth surface of the water. He did that for a while before taking his shirt off and carelessly diving in. He moved his arms like a merman so he could stay completely underwater, opened his eyes and blinked a couple of times for the itchy feeling to settle. The blurry image of the big swimmer getting farther and farther away worked as a hypnotic watch for a couple of seconds, until he remembered he was underwater and needed to come out for air.

Now a bit cooler, he did some lazy laps of his own and abstained from floating face up like a kid; the lifeguard seemed like the judgmental type. He should not have cared about that, but he did.

An hour later he got bored of moving around but not really getting anywhere, so he hoisted himself up and out of the pool, dried his body thoroughly and wondered if the taco place was open for breakfast, or if he should just go home. He was debating which way to go when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey,” it was Oliver’s Josh, except today he was just Josh since his name tag was nowhere to be seen. He was actually wearing a workout ensemble and looked very worked up. Big sweat beads rested on his bare shoulders and arms, and Tyler stared at those instead of looking him in the eye.

“Hi,” he responded, trying to sound as cool as him. Social interactions were hard for Tyler.

“Hey again,” he really could not stop smiling, that kid, even as he seemed to be working hard to even out his breath. “What are you up to this early?”

“I just went for a swim, but it’s not that early.” It really was not, around 10 a.m., but most of the town seemed to still be asleep.

“Cool, I’m just finishing my run.” Tyler just raised his eyebrows and nodded because that much was pretty obvious.

“Well, I’ll let you finish, then–”

“No, no, I’m just walking home from here. Or well, I was thinking about buying some CDs, but I don’t even know if there’s a, uh, record store around here or something.”

Josh used his hand to cover his eyes from the sun and Tyler noticed just how pale his skin was, how freckled. He wondered yet again if his skin felt as cold as it looked.

“Yeah, The Round About. It’s about eight blocks from here, but they rarely have any new stuff.” Tyler pointed in the direction of the store, which was near the lake just as his house.

“Even better, I like ’em old,” Josh joked, and his easiness was comforting, contagious even. Tyler laughed a bit.

“I mean, they’re obsolete. They have like, 30 CD’s.”

“Works for me,” Josh said with a laugh of his own. “So, that way?” He pointed in the general direction of Tyler’s house, which Tyler took almost as a sign from the universe that he should go home, besides, the taco place would most likely still be closed.

“Yeah, that way. I’m actually headed in that direction too, so…” He didn’t finish the sentence, but Josh nodded happily and began walking next to Tyler.

“So, is that store really the only place I can find CDs?” Josh tried subtly to start small talk, and Tyler was grateful for the topic, for the way it didn’t even feel like small talk.

“Yeah, it’s awful. Most people I know just go to Cleveland every once in a while, if they want, like, new stuff.”

Their steps involuntary fell in the same rhythm and Tyler gave two purposely larger steps in order to get them out of sync, which just felt weird. They made a turn and walked down Erie St., the town’s main street. It was undeniable that the town was old, that it held a history most of the neighboring towns, villages, and cities lacked. Perhaps, Tyler had thought one too many times, he would fit better in a more modern environment; a place where he could find current CDs and good Mexican food, for instance. A place where a new kid like Josh could find cool friends to hang out with.

Now that Tyler was seeing him properly and up close for the first time, he noticed the tattoo. A beautiful and complex tree grew near Josh’s right wrist and climbed its way up his arm and finished near his shoulder. Behind and above the tree, a mesmerizing combination of blue, purple, and even yellow and orange created a hypnotizing sky that looked like nothing Tyler had ever seen before. It was childish and colorful, and yet a badass full sleeve tattoo, turning Josh into the weirdest person to have walked Willoughby. Probably.

“I got it last year.” Tyler quickly averted his eyes from Josh’s arm. “You were staring at it.” He didn’t sound weirded out, just amused. That’s how Tyler would describe Josh’s general demeanor; amused.

“It’s just so… big. I don’t know. It’s cool.” Tyler held back, he would have liked to tell him it was the single most impressive tattoo he had ever seen.

“You can’t imagine how painful it was.” Josh lifted up his sleeve to reveal even more ink in his shoulder. He turned his arm at an angle where Tyler could see the underside and pointed at a spot near his armpit. “Especially this bit right here. I remember I had to stop the guy and just, like, breathe for a while.” He looked slightly up at Tyler’s face, like a kid expecting a reaction from their parent.

“That’s such a sensitive area, man, no wonder it hurt.”

“Worth every second, though. It means the world to me, this tattoo. It’s the only part of myself that I can stand to look at,” he said with that same careless laugh that accompanied everything he said, and Tyler stole a look his way to see if he was still smiling, which he wasn’t.

Tyler showed him his own tattoos then, all tiny in comparison to Josh’s. They had to switch places so Tyler could show him the series of hieroglyphic looking designs that lined the inner part of his right arm, and then switch again because Josh wanted to touch the thick tattoo bands in his left arm.

“They’re all so sick,” Josh sighed as he gently touched Tyler’s tattoo, going back and forth the inked and bare skin as if looking for a difference. “I really like how… neat they are.”

For a second Tyler thought he would ask him about their meaning, forcing Tyler to use his go-to answer for that question and tell him that they wouldn’t really mean anything to Josh since they only spoke Tyler’s language.

But Josh didn’t ask.

“Yours is amazing, though. Makes me feel like I’m just a kid with sharpie drawings all over my body.” He found himself trying to comfort him, even though nothing in Josh’s behavior suggested he needed any comfort.

“Just how many do you have?” Josh asked with a soft laugh.

“Just some more in my chest,” and before he could reconsider it, he stretched his shirt down to show Josh his favorite tattoo: four rectangles on top of his heart that meant everything to him, but nothing small enough to put into words. Josh peeked down at Tyler’s chest for just a second and looked away quickly.

“I kinda wanna stretch the tree into my chest as well,” Josh admitted, stretching down his own shirt and touching part of his shoulder and chest in demonstration. “Right around here.”

They walked all the way down Erie St. like that, baring body parts for the other to see until they absentmindedly reached the end of the street. They had to walk six blocks back to the record store, but neither of them really cared.

 

*****

 

“So, you weren’t lying,” Josh granted, amused. The Round About was absolutely and positively obsolete. It was a miracle the store was still open, let alone actually selling something.

They’d had to wait almost half an hour for the owner –who was also the cashier, manager, and maintenance guy– to open the store since they’d arrived too early. This meant they arrived fifteen minutes after it was supposed to open, but half an hour before it actually did, like most businesses in town. Once inside, Josh tried his best to avoid scrunching his nose at the moldy smell and dust in the air, fearing he would seem too city-boy like. However dingy and dark the place might have been, they were both immediately attracted to the racks and shelves like metal to a magnet, and began to browse through the poorly organized records.

“I think they’ve been trying to sell this Alan Parson vinyl since before I was born,” Tyler held up a worn vinyl case and Josh snorted.

“It could be like those cursed dolls no one buys so it becomes evil and vengeful. A cursed album,” he glanced a look at Tyler, waiting for a reaction. It was impossible for Tyler not to laugh and smile at him.

“So, what are you looking for?”

Josh sighed as he sorted through a dusty box of even dustier cassette tapes. “I don’t know, anything cool, really,” he said sheepishly. “I, uh, I was just kinda bored and figured I should go out, find good music in the process.”

He put down the tape he was examining and looked up at Tyler.

“I’m sorry, that was such a dumb answer, that’s not even what you asked.” Tyler noticed how he fidgeted with the box and tapes, much like he sometimes did with whatever was closest to him. “I’m looking for whatever you’ll recommend me… I mean, whatever anyone recommends, really. If someone likes it, I like it.”

Tyler just stared at him and, against his will, let out a small laugh.

The dust from all the records and tapes that danced between them stopped when Josh laughed too.

“I love your taste in music.” Tyler was now looking for something he would like among the boxes and shelves, excited about what he could find in The Round About for once.

 

*****

 

It was lunchtime by the time they left the store, a small paper bag in Josh’s arms with three tapes and two CDs. Tyler had chosen the CDs and Josh had decided on the tapes by simply choosing randomly between band names he knew, and some he thought he did.

Madison had texted Tyler in their mother’s name a couple of times, asking him where he was and if he would eat at home. He had told her _yes_ , he would eat at home. Where else would he go? That was before Josh said, “You wanna stop by my place? Listen to these?” He gestured at the small box, a hopeful smile on his face. No, not amused. _Transparent_ , was the word Tyler would use to describe him.

“My mom’s sort of waiting for me back at home,” he admitted, trying not to wince at how lame that had sounded.

“Oh, that’s cool.”

“I’m sorry, she’s just, you know, a mom and all. But you can come over some time, too. I’m down by the lake, or, right next to the lake I guess.”

“You have a lake house?” Josh’s hopeful smile was back, he was like a kid who would stop crying when shown a piece of candy or a toy.

“I guess I do. Is a house next to a lake a lake house?”

“I would call it that just so people think I’m cool and rich and own a lake house.”

Tyler faked a British accent and thought it might have been the dumbest thing he could have done, but he was far from caring. “Make sure to stop by my lake house some time, lad.”

He hoped Josh did visit sometime, just so he could listen to his stupid laugh again.

 

As he walked back home, Tyler thought he had the perfect lyrics on the tip of his tongue to a song he had yet to put down on paper, a song he only knew the silhouette of. After saying goodbye to Josh, he rushed to his house, avoiding every familiar face he saw on the streets; he figured if he talked to anybody the words to the non-existent song would slip right through his lips and disappear.

He managed to write down both the lyrics he had thought of, and some pieces of the melody on the bottom a music sheet that had the notes to a completely different song at the top. He was vibrating, from the tip of his head to his toes, his mind about to explode like a universe expanding with ideas. Why had it never occurred to him to go to The Round About for inspiration? He had visited several music stores in Columbus in search for new ideas, but perhaps the bright lights, the loud music playing from the speakers and the hum of voices had stood between the music and him, despite being surrounded completely by it; what he’d needed to break his slump was a raw connection with music that had been loved before, records that had been played one too many times, and CDs that had scratches on them.

For the rest of the day and well into the night, Tyler wrote and rewrote a song about someone, maybe himself. Or maybe it wasn’t about a person at all. Whatever it meant, it spoke with soft words and was lighter than anything he’d written so far. This new song was the first one to be kind to him, and Tyler didn’t know he had been wanting to feel that relief for so long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm the slowest fic writer in the universe, I'm very aware and very sorry. But better late than abandoned, right? I'm so happy my boys finally got to the chance to talk (I'm way too invested in this story). Again, huge thanks to my guardian angel, EncOREO. 
> 
> As always, comments and kudos are EXTREMELY appreciated. Thank you so so so much for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo whaddup, thank you for coming back even after 4 months of complete silence on this fic! I'm very grateful that you're here uwu. 
> 
> This chapter was not beta read, so any mistakes are the result of a life speaking English as a second language. Okay let's go!

On a lazy afternoon for the Joseph family, and against everything Mrs. Joseph had ever taught her kids, Madison brought a boy home. 

The house had been eerily quiet, like Tyler had ever only seen it during his sleepless late nights and early mornings back when he was in high school and breathing was harder for him. His dad, always the methodist, had been sitting with him for a while at the kitchen counter, going through bills and tickets and punching numbers on an old calculator while Tyler went through his old laptop’s music folders, looking for some inspiration for the drums of his latest song –so far, the search had proven itself fruitless. 

When Madison opened the front door, the sound of her voice accompanied by a graver, huskier one disturbed the otherwise mute house, making Mr. Joseph stop mid-calculation, and Tyler raised a surprised eyebrow at her. 

Mrs. Joseph came into the living room before anyone could say _boy_. 

“Hey, I didn’t know you’d all be here,” Madison said, clearly nervous. “This is Terry, I offered him to come by to wash up a bit, he fell earlier on some mud, so…” Her words had been a tad too rushed, enough for Mrs. Joseph to miss a beat before extending her hand towards Terry. Everyone was looking at her. 

“Sure, of course. Nice to meet you, Terry.”

The kid smiled as if he were not being scrutinized to the very core of his being by the woman in front of him. 

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to get mud all over you, ma’am,” he said, unfazed and still all smiles, holding up his dirty hands. “It was quite the accident,” he finished with a chuckle. 

After that, Mrs. Joseph visibly relaxed, and the aura in the room did too. Tyler found himself smiling at the kid’s sheepish, honest demeanor, so he forced himself to look back down at his computer and keep his face straight. Terry was tall and slim and had clearly just gone through a growth sprout; his arms and legs were lanky and bended awkwardly, like he wasn’t aware of just how long they were. He had a dimpled smile and a tuff of messy brown hair and Tyler was glad when he disappeared through the corridor that led to the bathroom, guided by Madison. 

“Charming,” Mr. Joseph said, going back to his numbers. 

“Where did he come from?” Mrs. Joseph wondered out loud, sill looking at the spot where Terry and Madison had been standing seconds ago.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” her husband sighed. “Hey! You could have Tyler follow them around and spy for you,” he joked. 

“Before you get any ideas,” Tyler said hastily, shutting his laptop closed and standing up, “I’m going out.”

“Say hi to Mark for me,” Mrs. Joseph said as she sat down on the closest couch, defeated. 

“Not going to Mark’s,” he mumbled and stepped outside. 

It was 6 o’clock and the sun had just begun to set, casting the whole town in gold and orange. Tyler hadn’t been planning on going out, in all honesty, but the idea of Madison having a guy over had hit him all of a sudden, and it made him feel weird. Not weirded out, but _weird_. Terry reminded him of a boy he knew from high school, Brad or Brice or something just as douchey sounding, who had been the very first boy Tyler ever liked. That was back when being gay seemed to be some sort of hazy bad dream, and being an aromantic wasn’t even close to becoming his reality yet. Even though it had always been. 

He had been Tyler’s lab partner during his sophomore year of high school, and his faint smell of cologne and boy had ignited a realization that curled itself around Tyler’s spine and climbed back up through his throat to come out in a soft “oh”. That is where it ended, nothing else came of it. 

But Terry smiled like some sort of character out of _Gilmore Girls_ , dimples and all, and the fact that Tyler was reminded of every Brice and Brad and Brian he had ever met made him want to run for the hills. 

Plus, the kid was sixteen at most, which turned Tyler into some sort of child predator. Or perhaps _he_ was the pray, since all he really wanted was to get as much space between them as he could. He had absentmindedly walked west, so he decided to visit The Round About and continue with his hunt for ideas. Whatever kept him out of that house for a while. 

A bell announced his entrance as he opened the door to the store, which was as empty as it had been the day he visited with Josh. The old speakers were playing a song by the Cranberries with a cool, thundering bass line that Tyler made a mental note of as he roamed through the shelves. 

He had already been browsing for a couple of minutes on the 90’s hip hop section when he noticed there was a 90’s hip hop section. He looked around at the other shelves and, sure enough, other categories had been created for easy classification; chick rock, 80’s bops, classic rock anthems, power ballads, and other –mostly empty– categories. The dust that covered pretty much everything had disappeared, and the place didn’t smell as moldy as Tyler remembered it. He held his breath and listened carefully for any sign of someone else inside the store, but all he could hear was the booming music, a bold choice in a town that used silence as a blanket and whispers as weapons. 

The Cranberries song that had been playing suddenly came to a halt and was replaced by a metal band with a name that sat at the tip of Tyler’s tongue, but he couldn’t quite remember.

From the second floor came the owner’s smoker voice. “Kid, I said no metal through the speakers!” 

A second later, the music changed again and Rod Stewart’s husky yet mellow singing filled the store. Tyler stood awkwardly by the 90’s hip hop section holding a broken Missy Elliot CD case in his hands and waiting for more shouting, but none came, instead, Josh walked through the non-sarcastic beads curtain that divided the front of the shop from the back carrying a big cardboard box wrapped shut with several layers of masking tape. 

“Hey,” Tyler croaked, holding the CD up as form of greeting.

“Tyler, hey,” Josh said, beaming at him. He hesitated for a moment and laughed nervously. “Rod’s just… I mean, I did it ironically.” 

Tyler snorted and put the Missy Elliot CD back in its place. “Of course.”

Josh set the box down on an empty shelf space next to the power ballads section and pulled out a pair of scissors from one of the back pockets of his jeans. 

“I sort of work here now,” Josh said without looking up from the box, and Tyler mentally kicked himself for not asking, curse his social skills. 

“That’s cool,” he mumbled lamely. If he weren’t dealing with a social situation, he would have shaken his head and hands and started over. But he wouldn’t be able to do that without a weird glance from Josh, so he merely bit his lip and tapped his fingers on the wooden shelves. 

“I like it, it doesn’t leave me stinking of meat and onion. Although I still work at Oliver’s, so I guess I should get used to that.”

Rod Stewart asked his lover again and again if he’d told her that he loved her while Tyler thought of something else to say. Outside, the chattering of a couple of women passing by was now audible above the soft music. People took talking for granted, they gossiped and joked and left the air around them void of words, leaving people like Tyler defenseless, quite literally speechless. 

“You did all this?” Tyler finally asked, gesturing around him at the newly organized categories, most of which consisted of roughly ten CDs. 

“Yeah, it’s a work in progress, but I think it’s coming along nicely. I had to force good old Denis up there to let me open some of these boxes that have been sitting back there for ages. He says nobody will even want to buy what’s inside, but I mean, as long as there’s something to offer other than those broken 30 CDs he’s so popular for…”

Tyler nodded and helped Josh remove the excess masking tape from around the box and both of them peered inside once it eased open. 

“How did you even know there were CDs in here?” 

The veins in Josh’s arms popped up as he picked up the box and set it down on the floor, and Tyler looked away. 

“Uh, this one had a receipt attached to it from a music store in Cincinnati from 2004.” Tyler chuckled, but Josh had a serious expression on his face. “I mean it. 2004.”

He ripped the receipt from the box and held it up for Tyler to read. The date at the top was, in fact, November 2004, and Denis had bought almost five hundred dollars worth of CDs. 

“Why did he buy all these CDs and left them there to gather dust? Some of these are actually cool.”

They went through the box together, reminiscing on what music had been like five years prior. Josh argued Avril Lavigne was the catalyst of “today’s emo scene”, as he put it, to which Tyler snorted and held up a My Chemical Romance album. They talked about the similarities between Keane and The Killers, something Josh had never considered but now realized were one too many. 

The floor around them was covered in CDs in small piles ready to be added to the existing categories, but they had separated some of their favorites to show one another (Tyler _needed_ Josh to listen to Madvillain, and Josh wanted Tyler to give Brand New a shot). 

Without noticing the passing of time, Tyler helped Josh arrange the 2004 albums amongst the rest of the (surprisingly older) CDs. There were actually two more boxes in the back, and they categorized those albums too while Rod Stewart sang in the background sounding as happy as they looked. 

Denis came downstairs around eight to tell Josh to close up, and didn’t say a word about the obviously fuller shelves, or the small pieces of paper that announced in black sharpie the genres above the rows of CDs. Tyler suspected Josh was not getting paid extra for his careful and hard work with the new organization, but he didn’t seem to mind. 

Before closing up, Josh paid for both his Madvillain CD and Tyler’s Brand New one. Of course, Tyler complained, but Josh wasn’t having it. 

“Just leave a generous tip next time you stop by Oliver’s,” he chirped. 

Even though Denis lived right on top of The Round About, Josh had to close up completely after himself, double lock and all. 

“He has always been like that,” Tyler said, gesturing to the second floor of the small green building before they started walking together. “I mean, everybody knows each other in this town, but nobody knows much about Denis. I’ve always considered him lucky.”

He added a smile for good measure, to lighten the mood after such a careless confession. 

“I like small towns like this, I’ve always sort of yearned for these places. Everybody works so hard, and they seem so happy.” 

The sun was completely down by now, but the air was still warm and heavy with humidity. Tyler had missed dinner, and it surprised him to realize that not one of his family members had tried to reach him to know where he was. 

“I guess, I’ve never really paid much attention to this town, it’s not my favorite.” Was he bringing Josh down? Showing his true colors had seem like the natural thing to do, what everybody advises little kids to do when trying to make new friends, but Tyler’s true colors may be a shade or two darker than the norm. “But you know what this place has that I love? Taco Local.”

“You are a man of fine taste,” Josh laughed, either blissfuly oblivious to the meaning of Tyler’s previous comment or going with the change of subject. Tyler was thankful nonetheless. 

Tyler didn’t have to ask, neither did Josh, they just made their way to the town center, where the only Mexican food restaurant could be found. It was a hybrid between a food truck and a barbecue patio, with the truck on one side and a roofed area with wooden tables and chairs on the other. Fairy lights zigzagged above their heads and the dry grass crunched beneath their shoes as they approached the truck. 

“You ever been here before? Their barbacoa tacos are to die for,” Tyler said, sticking his hands in his pockets and giving Josh a quick look.

“I know, I’ve eaten here a couple of times. I live right across the street.” Josh pointed at a flower shop on the bottom floor of a red brick building.

“Do you live there by yourself?” 

“Yeah, the family’s back in Columbus,” he said with a dismissive shrug and his ever-present soft smile. 

Tyler kept his eyes on Josh as he ordered, and was shaken out of his trance by the lady in the truck, who greeted him by name and gushed about how long it had been since the last time he stopped by. 

“College, huh?” She said jokingly before ringing up their order. 

They carried their food to a table and Tyler waited as Josh divided everything he had ordered meticulously and finally unwrapped a burrito. 

“What?” Josh asked, stopping the burrito halfway up to his mouth. 

“That- that’s so much food,” Tyler laughed, looking down at the table, which was so full of food some of it had to be put on top of the other. All of it, except for the barbacoa tacos, was Josh’s. 

“I’m not much of a cooker, this is my sustenance for the week.” 

“Why do you live alone?” The question was wrenched out of his mouth by the moment, by Josh’s apologetic face as he too looked down at his hoard of food. 

“Because,” he said around a mouthful of burrito, “I wanted out of that big mean city, and I had a bit of money, so…”

It sounded simple, really. Tyler knew it wasn’t. All his life he had been trying to do the exact opposite, break away from the gossip and deafening silence and the smell of wet wood. 

“Why Willoughby?”

Josh considered the question as he chewed slowly. He swallowed with a laugh and a shake of his head. 

“Actually, I don’t know. I had a car, and one day I just packed my bags and got in it. I drove all night until I reached the lake, all I knew was I wanted a lake town. Then I had to choose the town, any town, I told myself as I drove. Before I knew it I was in freaking Cleveland, which I find even scarier than Columbus.”

“But you drove on.”

“But I drove on, because none of the other places had really caught my eye. And then the sun began to rise, and I was still driving, and the reflection of the light in my rearview mirror was blinding me, so I took an exit to the right and here I am.”

“The interstate exit leads to this street,” Tyler said more to himself than to Josh. 

“Erie Street, yeah. I fell in love with this place just as I read that name.”

Tyler laughed and, again, glanced down at the table. Even if he was laughing genuinely, it always came out as a nervous gesture. 

“That is so cute,” he kept laughing lightly. “So, so sappy. You know how many nearby towns have an Erie Street?”

“Hey, I stand by my decision. I love this place. My apartment? I found it on my first day here, and at a very good price, too.”

The lady who had taken their order came by their table to take their trash, smiling fondly at Tyler when he thanked her. Josh asked her for a bag or two to carry all his food, and she was quick to bring some, which he quickly filled with burritos and tacos and tostadas.

The silence that came after that was not comfortable, but it was good, and it lay a heavy weight on Tyler’s chest.

The truck was about to close for the night and they were ready to go. Although they weren’t. Tyler helped Josh with one of the bags, but it was pointless since his apartment was just across the street and they really weren’t heavy. As they reached the street, Tyler extended the bag at Josh, but he didn’t take it. 

“Wanna come see my place?”

“Yeah,” Tyler breathed out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow why did this take me so long? Also, why is this just one huge scene?? Anyway, one of my resolutions this year is to write more, so I hope I do my muse justice and just continue with this a bit more regularly.
> 
> Honestly, thank you SO SO much for reading!!!


	5. Chapter 5

Josh let Tyler enter first. He opened the door to his apartment, switched the lights on and promptly stepped aside to let Tyler in. Just like the narrow stairs they had climbed, Josh’s home was tiny and crowded. Above them, a dim ceiling light casted the room in a faint warm glow that really didn’t do much for the room’s illumination.

“Sorry, I gotta…” Josh trailed off and walked past Tyler’s still figure in front of the door to turn some other lights on. He had a foot lamp near the only couch, a desk lamp resting on a bookshelf that held everything but books, and a set of fairy lights that seemed to grow from the cracks of the red brick walls like vines. 

The new lights bounced off the naked wooden floors and illuminated the old, mismatched furniture, the bare walls and the tiny , cluttered living room. It was almost melancholic in its disarray, but the golden warmth of the incandescent lights and the presence at least a dozen potted plants made it clear that it was lived in, and very much loved. 

“You have so many plants,” Tyler said, closing the door behind him but otherwise staying put. 

“I have a couple,” Josh laughed. He was now standing in front of Tyler with his hands in his pockets, looking as unsure as Tyler did about what to do next. 

Tyler cleared his throat and walked over to the kitchen table where Josh had set the food bag down during the process of turning on the lights . They had stuck the CDs in there, so he picked one at random and held it up, knitting his brow into a question.

“Oh yeah, let’s definitely listen to that.” Josh took the CD out of Tyler’s hands –Brand New it was– and popped in an ancient, clunky CD player that sat on the ground by the couch, where he plopped down contently. The record started with a preface by the singer, and Tyler snorted lightly. 

“Is this like an EP? You got me, I love this already,” he smiled genuinely at Josh as he crossed the apartment in a couple of strides to sit next to him. 

“It is, and it’s actually a pretty rare album, so I’m surprised Denis got his hands on it.”

After a brief silence the first song began to play, slow and soft. Neither of them spoke over it, and the only other noise present arrived through the window that Josh had opened to keep them cool in the absence of an air conditioning system. It wasn’t late but Josh was tired, Tyler could tell, so he said nothing when Josh closed his eyes and rested his head on the couch. As the songs quickened in rhythm, Josh began to bounce his leg up and down, tap his fingers against his thighs and move his head from side to side like a rocking ship against the tide. Tyler stared at him openly for awhile, silently taking in his gentle movements and rough looks, his warm smile and odd taste in music.

He stared until he was suddenly reminded of the picture depicting the boat and sharks that hung in Mark’s apartment. Josh was just as captivating and twice as unsettling. A moving photograph, oddly off-putting in the best sort of way. 

A boy with sharks underneath his skin.

At the end of the third song Josh let his head fall to the side so he could look at Tyler, who had only stopped staring at him a mere couple of seconds prior.

“What do you think?” He couldn’t suppress the expectant smile that lit his features.

“This is better than what I remember them being, I’ll admit.”

“This is their rawest, purest material, you should consider yourself lucky for being able to listen to it.” Josh sat up properly and pressed his legs against his chest, turning ninety degrees so they were facing each other.

_ I am lucky _ , Tyler thought. 

 

***   
  


It was almost midnight when Tyler left. They listened to Brand New’s EP twice ,  and Tyler asked Josh to listen to Madvillain when he wasn’t there because he wanted him to experience it without the weight of Tyler’s expectations. 

Ever the gentleman, Josh asked Tyler if he wanted him to walk him home, and out of habit, he declined. He only really considered the offer once he was halfway home. Ultimately, he had decided that refusing the offer had been the right decision, otherwise Josh would have had to make the walk back home alone, and the thought of Josh making his way back home wearily through the deserted, somber streets triggered an unease that tugged at his heart. He was thinking about it too much, he knew, but overthinking was his specialty.   
  


***   
  


As the sun rose the next morning, so did Tyler’s mood. Inspiration had struck him during his sleep. It came in the shape of a simple melody accompanied by a couple of lyrics that, while caught in his half-dormant stupor, he had hastily scribbled on the back of a receipt lying abandoned on the floor. He had no clue as to what it meant, not yet, but he did know that it was important, and that it was about him. He would have to find time to sit down later and scrutinize the song if he hoped to make any sense of it. But, for now he was simply glad that he had something. 

Tyler was not a fool. He was well aware that Josh had sparked something in him that led him to write not one, but two songs since meeting him; however, he was also well acquainted with the harsh feeling in his chest, and it pressed heavily against his heart, preventing him from feeling anything else. Emptiness, blankness. Hands had held his own and warmed his face before, and even then, he had felt nothing. He felt only the static in his ears fighting against whispered words of encouragement. Spoiler alert, the static always won. 

However, on the brighter side, he could stare at boys’ faces all he wanted. He could find inspiration in them for songs that sang of everything but love, and then move on and indulge in the feeling of his heart beating, intact and whole, against his rib cage.

In present, he was doing just that, playing his new born song on his keyboard; tenderly testing out notes and lyrics, when he got a text from Mark. 

_ you, me, and that new donuts place downtown. pick u up in ten.  _

_ Okay _ , he answered simply, knowing full well that Mark couldn’t be denied impromptu outings, or any outing for that matter, not if you didn’t want him to cause a scene. 

Tyler pulled on a pair of jeans that he found on the floor, hoped they were clean enough, brushed his teeth, ran his hands through his hair and smelled his shirt for good measure… He decided he should definitely change his shirt. 

Outside, a car honked for five straight seconds, earning a sigh from Tyler. He could picture the curious faces of his neighbors peeking from behind curtains and blinds, staring open-mouthed at Mark’s BMW.

“You look nice for 8 a.m.!” Mark half shouted sarcastically from his window as Tyler walked out of his house and locked the front door behind him.

“You look awake for 8 a.m.,” he retorted. Mark, very much in-character, wore an outfit worthy of a young CEO, complete with white sneakers, a smart blazer and sunglasses. 

“You’ll feel awake after the donuts, man. I swear to god, they’re life changing.”

 

***

 

The donuts were not, in fact, life changing, but they were nice and warm and Tyler did feel a bit more alive after a couple. Mark ordered white mocha for both of them and they laughed at each other’s foam mustaches. 

“It’s a nice place, isn’t it? I know you’re not a huge Oliver’s fan, we could just come here to gossip from now on,” Mark said, wiping his mouth with a napkin. Tyler was touched, there was nothing Mark liked more than sharing the town’s hottest secrets at the diner. 

“No, I like Oliver’s,” Tyler began, and Mark just raised an eyebrow. “I do! I like the food, and the gossiping, I just don’t like the, uh, the amount of people, I guess.”

“It’s okay, let’s just hang here for a while.” 

Tyler’s eyes crinkled with a smile. “Thank you.”

“No need to thank me, I’m just buttering you up,” Mark murmured against the rim of his mug before taking a sip and looking away. 

“What was that?”

“I’m buttering you up, okay?” He put the cup down looking guilty, as if Tyler had wrenched a confession out of him. 

“… For?” He knew he didn’t want to hear it. He braced himself. 

“Nichols is throwing a party at his place tonight, and I thought, what a stupid thing, right? But then I heard our whole high school class is going, and that it’s gonna be epic. Three people asked me already if I was going, Ty, three.” He leaned against the back of his chair and took another sip from his cup, making a show of calming himself down. “And I don’t wanna go alone, but I  _ need _ to go.” 

At least five excuses ran through Tyler’s head. 

_ My sister’s gonna be home alone tonight and I need to look after her, sorry.  _

_ I’m catching a once in a lifetime concert on TV. _

_ I can’t go out with you because of who I am as a person. _

But Mark’s eyes begged him just as much as his words did, he was biting his lip while tearing an empty sugar packet in half, and in half, and in half. Tyler sighed.

“Why do you wanna go so badly?” 

“People are crap, okay? Our class treated me like a walking joke when we were in high school, and I played along, I was their funny guy. But it’s been three years, man, and I want them to know that I’ve changed. I left this place, I study in Cleveland, I’m about to go to freaking England to get an MBA.” 

“Congrats about that, by the way,” Tyler intervened, clapping Mark on the shoulder and offering him a smile. 

“Thanks, yeah, that’s awesome, I know.” For a second it was Mark again, Mark and Tyler, not just a couple of insecure, frightened kids. “What I’m saying is, just… can’t I gloat a little? I think I’ve earned that.”

The reality was, they  _ were _ a couple of insecure kids. Mark was self-conscious about what people thought of him despite owning half the town, and Tyler was so afraid of standing out he had given up on being remembered. If they were to think rationally, they would realize that they were just secondary characters in everyone else’s lives, others had their own struggles and realities to think about, and were far from concerned about their lives.

But there was no way one could think rationally with two donuts and a mocha worth of sugar in their veins. 

“Okay, let’s do it,” Tyler said, holding his head high solemnly. 

“Really? Dude, you’re the greatest, and the best friend in the whole world. I’ll pick you up, alright, and you can stay at my place.”

Agreeing to being an escort was one thing, but thinking about having to stay until Mark was done gloating was another. Tyler would feel more comfortable knowing he could just drive home after Mark got drunk enough to make friends with anybody and everybody. That was Drunk Mark Phase Three. 

“I think I’ll take the Jeep, and I’m not sure you should be taking your car.”

“Right, you’re right. Ah, I’ll just grab a taxi or something. Thank you so much, I promise it’ll be alright, we’ll have a great time.”

As tradition had it, Mark went to pay their whole bill but Tyler refused and paid for his own food, and Mark made Tyler promise he’d let him pay next time, which never happened. It was hard to believe they had stopped doing that for three years.  Looking back, the last time they had seen each other face to face had been back  during the winter break of their first semester of college, when Tyler had actually been glad to be home from school and Mark wasn’t traveling through Europe with his mom or exploring Peru with his dad. One or two skype calls a month weren’t nearly enough, so Tyler made a mental note of fixing that.

There was a package Mark had been expecting from an online store in Japan that hadn’t arrived yet, so Tyler agreed to go with him to the post office to see if it was there, thankful for the opportunity to walk a bit and burn off all the extra sugar.

All the shop’s windows announced the presence of summer as if the weather weren’t sign enough.  _ Time to get your beach on! The tans will fade but the memories will last forever!  _ Whatever that meant. As they walked downtown toward the post office they passed Oliver’s, which was not exempt from the summer paraphernalia. The main window had been decorated with stickers of beach balls and flip flops, and on the other side of it, Josh cleaned a table as a party of five hovered nearby, ready to pounce and claim it. 

He didn’t notice Tyler. He finished cleaning the table and beamed at the new customers before returning to his usual spot behind the counter.

“Dude, oh, man. Dude,” Mark said suddenly, grabbing urgently at Tyler’s sleeve.

“What? What is it?” 

“I know who Nichols was caught making out with by his parents.” He was practically glowing with excitement.

“Yeah?” He had a clue of who it might have been, a couple of names from school had popped into his head the first time Mark told him about it. Whoever it was he was sorry people now tainted his life with the notion that what he had done was wrong, worthy of turning into petty gossip. 

“It was… are you ready for this? It was the new kid, the guy with the blue hair.” He could barely contain his smile as he said it, but Tyler’s expression remained unfazed. Josh’s name wanted to leave his lips, but somehow saying it felt wrong, like a secret that wasn’t his to tell.

“Huh,” was all he allowed. 

“You know who I’m talking about, right? Tattoos, nose ring, quite bright blue hair. I don’t know his name, but-“

“Yes, yeah, I know him.”

Mark stared at him for a couple of seconds, his expression readable like a book. It went from encouraging excitement to childish hurt as Tyler merely looked at the ground and kept walking, completely unreactive to Mark’s news. 

“I-It’s dumb, really, I honestly feel that whole deal was blown out of proportion.” He cast an anxious look at Tyler but said nothing more. 

Once they reached the post office and Mark received his package, his good mood returned. 

“Don’t laugh, but I ordered a bunch of cat toys,” he admitted, shaking the box next to his ear despite knowing its contents. 

“You don’t have a cat,” Tyler countered, fighting back laughter.

“Oh, but I will. I just submitted the adoption request.”

“Fancy way of getting a cat.”

“The shelter just needs to make sure I’m a capable, reliable owner.”

“You’ll be a great cat dad.” 

“I already am, even if I don’t have a cat yet. But listen, I gotta run, but I’ll meet you at Nichols’, yeah? I’ll try to arrive fashionably but reasonably late so say, eleven-ish.”

“Yeah, okay, I’ll see you then.”

Mark, honoring his word, actually ran back to his car after giving him directions to Nichols’ house and thanking him once more. 

As Tyler watched him leave, he was hit by his words from earlier.  _ Tattoos, nose ring, quite bright blue hair. _ He felt guilty all of a sudden, dirty with private information on somebody else’s life. He looked back at the neon sign outside of the town’s unanimous favorite diner, still visible from outside the post office. It flashed on and off in sync with his breathing. 

He was crossing the front doors before he knew it. 

It wasn’t lunch time yet, so most of the tables Tyler had to walk around on his way to the counter were empty. He spoke as soon as he was close enough to read the small tag that read  _ Oliver’s Josh.  _

“I write music. I wanna be a singer.”

He figured since he had learned something about Josh, it was only fair he confessed something back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please join me in thanking my beautiful beta reader Anya (sdgwg on ao3) for both an amazing job editing this chapter AND being my motivation to keep writing this story. You were heaven sent. 
> 
> I hope y'all enjoyed this chapter, hank you so much for reading and for your patience!!


	6. Chapter 6

For the second time that week, a boy was introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Joseph’s household. 

Mirroring what Josh had done when he invited him to his house, Tyler opened the front door and stepped aside to let Josh in. The living room was in the same condition as it had been when Madison herself had committed the exact crime Tyler was now guilty of. The singular difference was that being a boy meant that it was perfectly okay for Tyler to bring other boys home. Oh, the irony.  

Mrs. Joseph sat at the kitchen counter alongwith Zack and two half eaten sandwiches while Mr. Joseph washed the dishes from breakfast. 

“Hey, uh, this is Josh,” Tyler pointed at him awkwardly once he had gotten his family’s attention. “Josh, this is my mom, my dad and my brother Zack.”

“Yeah I know, I work with him,” Zack said with a grin and a head tilt in Josh’s direction. “How’s it going, man, how’s Oliver’s”

“Good, thanks, I only worked half a shift today, so I’m… I’m good, yeah. And nice to meet you Mr. and Mrs. Joseph, sorry for the intrusion.” Josh put his hands in his pockets and alternated between looking at Tyler’s parents and the ground until Tyler spoke up. 

“I uh, just wanted to show him something, so…” His sentence drifted off, lost in the inquisitive gazes of his family members. Saying he felt weird was an understatement. He hadn’t lived in this house for over three years, but he wouldn’t be surprised if he were to find all the calendars in the house stuck in time, claiming he was still a seventeen year old boy asking his parents to let him have some of his basketball buddies over for a couple of hours. 

“You have such a nice house. Sorry, a nice lake house,” Josh joked as they made their way upstairs. Tyler chuckled but didn’t turn around. 

“So this is, uh, _was_ my room, I guess.” The door had been left open, so Tyler simply gestured with a hand and had Josh enter before him, but cursed himself for it immediately. The bed was unmade and smothered in various notebooks and messy heaps of music sheets, and all his clothes were either bunched up inside the open suitcase by the foot of the bed or laying abandoned on the carpeting. 

Josh, however, didn’t seem to notice any of that. He walked straight through the catastrophe toward the small collection of basketball trophies and medals that cluttered the desk. But even those were coated in dust and appeared to have been long forgotten. 

“Didn’t know you played.” Josh took hold of a trophy and rubbed at the tiny basketball held by the faceless player until it shone gold again. 

“I used to, back in high school. I got a scholarship, but I didn't’ want to play anymore.” _It’s hard to keep information from Josh_ , Tyler realized as the words left his mouth without him having noticed it.

Josh only nodded and offered him such a shockingly gentle smile that it made Tyler look away quickly. He had invited Josh over based on a poorly controlled whim to play his music for him that he had regretted complying with almost immediately, because now Josh was in his room, grabbing at his belongings with his careful hands, smiling and expecting to hear music Tyler wasn’t ready to share yet. He eyed the keyboard sheepishly and took a hand to his head, twisting the soft hairs that grew at the very top nervously. 

“I don’t- I don’t really know what I should show you,” Tyler murmured and Josh looked up at him again, the smile seemingly unrelenting.

“Oh, you don’t have to show me anything if you’re not ready. I’m okay just chilling here.” Like a child, he dropped to the floor and sat crossed legged in the middle of the room. From that angle he noticed the books that Tyler kept underneath his bed in the absence of space in the bedroom for a bookshelf. He reached for one at random, and Tyler was glad he pulled Animal Farm out, rather than some of the poetry books he had bought in search of a muse.

But, of course, he caved into Josh’s spell, to the hypnotic effects of the patterns that the damn sharks drew underneath his skin. 

“I have some poetry books there too.” He sat down unceremoniously in front of him with a sigh, coming to terms with the fact that there was simply no fight in his bones when it came to Josh. “Inspiration for lyrics.” 

Josh nodded enthusiastically and carefully placed the book back where he’d found it. “That’s what Sufjan Stevens does as well, the only poetry I’ve read have been the ones that he’s mentioned in his interviews.”

“Is he- Seven Swans?” 

“Yeah, that’s on his latest album.” 

“I should listen to it then, I only know that one song.”

“Come by my place some time, I’ll play it for you.” Josh’s eyes, normally squinted with laughter were now saucers of raw and unconcerned enthusiasm as he looked at Tyler, and Tyler looked back despite being sure and absolutely terrified that those big brown eyes were, in that very moment, reading his mind.

When he finally looked away it was because he stood to retrieve his keyboard from where it lay partially hidden underneath a bunch of spare pieces of paper with lyrics and notes scrawledon them. 

“This is a song I wrote just when I got back from college,” Tyler rushed his words as he sat on the bed, away from Josh’s hypnotic everything. “It’s not finished, you’ll notice that, but it- it’s something, and I think I like it.”

Josh positioned himself so he was now facing Tyler, who shook his head and hands before playing the first notes to his untitled song tentatively. He went through the intro a couple of times, feeling the notes, getting used to the jittery feeling of being observed and the timid shakiness of his fingers. When he opened his mouth, the lyrics came out as a hum. He hummed hesitantly, eyes closed. It was like feeling his way around a dark room he vaguely knew. But when he found his way, he sang. It was a simple melody, just his voice and his keyboard, but it floated heavily in the room, carrying with it Tyler’s unusual shyness. He had shown Zack some of his music before, but it had never felt like that. 

The song ended abruptly around the second chorus, missing a bridge powerful enough to compete with the first verses. Tyler looked up at Josh and blushed when he realized just how intently he had been watching him. 

Tyler played two more songs for him, his fingers steady now, before he had to leave for his afternoon shift at the Round About. 

 

*****

 

With full intentions of being on his best behavior during tonight’s party and actually having a good time, Tyler took a nap and had a big dinner. 

Earlier, he had managed to keep his mouth shut about Jamie Nichols’ party, thank God. If the subject had been brought up, Tyler was sure his unruly tongue would have slipped and forced him to ask Josh if he was going, if he liked Nichols’ still, if kissing other boys was something he did often, if he’d push Tyler away if he got too close. 

Curse his train of thought. 

As he stared at the floor of the shower waiting for the water to heat up, he realized two things. One, that trying to find the answers to those questions would be ill-advised at best, seeing that he didn’t want to risk scaring Josh away. And two, even if he did find answers, he wouldn’t really know what to _do_ with that information. 

He didn’t even know what he wanted from Josh. 

Most of his dressier clothes were still in his suitcase, so he rummaged throughthe unorganized heap, and settled for a dark pair of jeans and a maroon, short-sleeved button up that Jenna had gotten him for Christmas last year. He felt like an asshole when he looked himself in the mirror. It would have to do. 

The unusual crispiness of the night air was not enough to stop the oppressive heat that made sweat bead on his forehead and the curling baby hairs stick to his damp temples. Absentmindedly, he sang along to the Ke$ha song the radio was playing as he drove to the other side of town, where the commercial area gave way to taller buildings and apartment complexes. Nichols lived quite close to the flower shop atop of which Josh lived, but Tyler had to remind himself that that knowledge in and of itself meant nothing.

He eventually found a parking spot in front of the local arcade, which had been closed since 2003. The dark and eerie street gave no indication that a party was going on nearby, but as he rounded the corner, Tyler found a throng of his former classmates pouring out of a building, muffled music coming from inside. 

 _Please let Mark be here already,_ he implored of the Heavens as he glanced at his watch: 11:17. _Please_. 

Willoughby South High School was a tiny place, so some of the people gathered in the apartment and milling outside must be from Eastlake, Tyler thought, wading his way between the indoor maze of bodies and furniture. He knew some kids from Eastlake, he had played against the neighboring town’s high school dozens of times since it was the only school the team could afford to drive to when the town wasn’t sponsoring their trips. They were mostly friendly matches, so the atmosphere was light enough to make friends. 

Inside the surprisingly large kitchen, kids from the football team were loudly celebrating their reunion, shoving each other and laughing thunderously with their arms casually slung over the small shoulders of pretty girls who faintly remembered them. Tyler briefly glanced in their direction and kept walking in search of Mark. 

“Ty-lo!” 

The nickname was only reserved to his basketball team, so Tyler let out a breath of relief as he spotted his ex-teammates.  

Dex had been the one who called his name, and with him were Lenny, Gil and Ronan who, despite being every word used to describe stereotypical boys, had always been good and kind to Tyler. 

“It’s so good to see you!” Gil exclaimed, arms extended and ready for a hug. The harsh blush on his usually pale cheeks was a sure indicator that he was a bit drunk already. Tyler hugged him and gave his back a couple of pats, laughing. 

“It’s good to see you all too,” he said, smiling broadly and glancing at each one of them through his smiling eyes.

Ronan grabbed him by the shoulders and shouted about it having been too long, man, too long, while Lenny opened a beer and offered it to Tyler. 

“It has, it has been a while. A while…” he drifted off, lowering his head timidly at the overwhelming attention. 

“How’ve you been, Tyler? Last time I saw you was, like, three years ago,” Dex said, placing a hand on Tyler’s shoulder after the rest of the team had gone back to whatever they had been discussing earlier. 

“Great, I ended up deciding on Columbus.” He frowned and took a sip of his beer. Had he really not talked to his teammates in three years? Had it really been that long? “I’m a business major.”

“You? A business major?” His eyes were wide, his face bemused. 

“I know, who would have thought?” Tyler simpered at his friend. 

“Hey, do any of you actually remember Jamie?” Ronan interrupted, using a hand to ask for silence from Gil and Lenny. “‘Cause Lenny here won’t stop nagging me about how rude it is not to remember him and still be here drinking his booze.”

Dex exchanged a glance with Gil and both boys shrugged sheepishly. “Nah, not really. But the whole school’s invited, it’s okay,” he reasoned. 

As if invoked by their words, Jamie walked right past them and into the kitchen, carrying a large bong and a plastic bag. Tyler saw him walk by in slow motion, and upon seeing his face, he remembered him, and how he had once been to his house in grade school for a church event since both their families went to the same church. Jamie's mom offered him and Tyler a plate of sliced oranges to snack on as the adults talked, and Jamie had thanked her and kissed her cheek. 

Later she'd she kicked Jamie out of his own home. 

Tyler watched as he and the football guys set the bong up and passed it around, tinting the whole room white. 

“Here’s to that!” Came Ronan’s muffled voice, and Dex’s beer can clashing against his own brought Tyler back to the present. He didn’t even know what his friends were drinking to, but he downed his beer with them just the same. _To good, innocent, ruined kids._

Over an hour ticked by and Tyler had yet to see Mark around. Part of him couldn’t help but feel hurt since he had only agreed to come because Mark would be there, because Mark supposedly needed him there. But part of him couldn’t care less, not after his fourth beer and a couple of shots Ronan had insisted on drinking as a team. 

“To the 2005 championship, which we _butchered_!”

“To South High!”

“To Gil’s adorable pink cheeks, look at them!”

After his last shot, the whole room did a backflip and he knew there was no way he could ride back home on his Jeep. He checked his watch for the hundredth time only to remember, yet again, that he couldn’t read the numbers through the smoke that had engulfed the whole floor. 

His concerns were short lived as Jamie suddenly appeared between Dex and him, throwing his arms around them like an old friend would. 

“Are you guys having a good time?” He asked, and Tyler had to work hard to focus on his handsome, All-American profile. _No wonder Josh had been into him._ Tyler willed his body to be smaller, invisible. 

“Jamie, hey,” he mumbled dumbly. 

“Yeah, we’re doing super, thanks for having us,” Lenny slurred as politely as he could, and Ronan rolled his eyes. 

Tyler pressed his lips together tightly to avoid asking Jamie about Josh, and begged his eyes to remain trained on his shoes, rather than ogling Jamie’s face. 

“I’m glad, keep having fun, and don’t pee on the flower pots,” he winked lazily at the group and left, allowing Tyler to breathe normally again. 

“You see? He’s such a cool guy, the least you could do is fucking remember him.” Lenny slapped Ronan on the chest and looked around for his drink, having forgotten he had already finished it.

“Well, a bit late for that,” Ronan mumbled as he downed his own drink. 

Tyler felt Dex’s hand on his shoulder –again– so he turned to look at him. 

“Everything alright?” Dex used to play point guard, and his ability to be constantly aware of what was happening in the whole court so that he could coordinate his teammates had always been his strong suit. Tyler used to suspect Dex was omnipresent, or at least some sort of forgotten semi-god, with his mocha skin and eyes that could see all. He never failed, not even now, not even drunk, to see what happened around him. 

He wanted to cry, suddenly overwhelmed by his surroundings, by Jamie’s stupid handsome face and Dex’s patient eyes. 

“I think I’m too drunk, it might be time for me to go home,” Tyler admitted. 

If only Jenna could see him now, sloppy drunk with tears stinging his eyes at a damn house party. She’d be so disappointed, although she’d hug him close and take him home, probably even take him to get something to eat. Oh, how he loved her. 

“You want me to walk you home? You still by the lake?” Dex offered, concern clear in his features. He had set his beer down and was tapping at his sides, surely looking for his belongings.

“No, no, I’m fine,” Tyler argued, laughing a bit and dismissing Dex’s offer with a flick of his wrist. “I’m not that drunk, just tired. And mad, I guess, I was supposed to meet a friend here and he never showed up.” 

“You sure? I was thinking of heading back home soon myself anyway.” He eyed the rest of the team, who were looking at them with three pairs of wide eyes. 

“I’m sure, you guys have fun.”

It took ten more minutes for Tyler to actually leave the party, he had to swear several times that he’d visit more often, and that he’d look for the four of them on Facebook. Jamie was nowhere to be seen as he crossed the apartment and walked out into the cool night, and he was thankful for that. The small crowd outside the building had dissipated. All that was left was one of the football guys sitting on the steps to the entrance with a dark haired girl with eyes like a cat’s.

In the absence of his friend’s company and the pounding music, Tyler realized he was _pissed_. Mark had practically begged him to come with him, and yet he knew nor saw anything of him for the whole night. He was mad to the point of tears, which had begun to flow freely the moment he stepped into the hallway outside Jamie’s apartment. 

Absentmindedly, and having forgotten he had told himself he would walk home, Tyler walked right to where he had parked his car.

Seeing as he had even taken his keys out, the idiot, he locked the Jeep for good measure and stuck his hands in his pockets, ready for the long walk home. Stupid Willoughby. Stupid shots. Stupid flower shop underneath Josh’s apartment, which he unfortunately had to walk by. Stupid Josh. 

“Hey,” the word was barely breathed out, but he made it out it clearly as it floated down toward him through the otherwise silent street. 

Tyler looked up. Leaning against the windowsill of one of his tiny living room windows was Josh. 

“Hey,” he called back, feeling as though he had been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to. 

“It’s almost two in the morning,” Josh said, amused. 

“Felt like going for a walk,” Tyler lied feebly. But he knew Josh could tell it was a lie, he just laughed and shook his head. 

“Come upstairs, you absolute mess.” And he disappeared inside. 

 

*****

 

Once more, Josh’s apartment was lit by secondary light sources rather than by the ceiling lights. The soft scent of the plants and dust lulled Tyler into a sense of safety, similar to that of coming home after a long day. He sat at the couch and closed his eyes so he could focus on the soft noises Josh made as he prepared some tea for Tyler. He listened to the shuffling of his slippers, the clinking of spoons, the _click click click_ of the stove coming to life. 

“You’re not a frat boy, but you party like one,” Josh said as he sat next to Tyler, offering him the steaming cup. 

“Ha, ha.”

“I didn’t even know there were parties around here.” Josh brought his feet up and watched as Tyler nursed the tea slowly. 

“There aren’t, or, there weren’t.” Against his better judgement, Tyler decided to bring Jamie Nichols up. “This kid I used to go to school with got kicked out of his house, and now he throws parties at his apartment every once in a while, or that’s what I’ve heard.”

“Hm,” was all Josh allowed. 

“He was caught by his parents with… with another boy. They kicked him out because of that. And now he lives alone and smokes pot.” Tyler’s voice cracked at the end. He knew his eyes were probably as red as the bricks of the apartment, but he risked a glance at Josh’s face. He immediately looked away from him, and Tyler felt how harshly guilt formed a tight knot at the base of his throat.

“Tyler, you-“ 

“Hey, can I crash here?” Shit. Shit. Shit. “I was planning on walking back home, but it’s like six miles, and I…”

“Tyler.”

Josh grabbed the cup from his hands, it was threatening to fall from Tyler’s trembling fingers. For the second time that night, he began to cry. If he was having a panic attack or he was just too drunk, he didn’t know, all he knew was that he couldn’t draw breath without letting it out in desperate sobs. 

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” he repeated like a mantra as Josh grabbed his hands and squeezed them tightly. 

“It’s alright, you’re okay.” It was clear Josh had no idea what to do, which made Tyler feel worse. He wanted so badly to calm down, not so he could feel better, but to relieve Josh from the burden of his embarrassing tears. “Can I?” Josh asked, putting his arm gingerly around Tyler’s shaking shoulders. 

Tyler leaned into Josh’s ever-warm body and willed his breathing to slow down as he rationalized his tears. He was crying about Mark completely forgetting about him. He was crying about Josh. And maybe even about Jamie; he was such a good kid, such a loving, kind kid whose parents had cast aside like an old, stained t-shirt. Would his parents do the same?

“Everything’s gonna be okay,” Josh kept saying, and as cheesy as his words were, they worked as an anchor in Tyler’s stormy mind. 

It was easy to believe in Josh’s gentle reassurance, and soon it too became easy to breathe. 

“Why don’t you sleep in my bed?” Josh whispered once Tyler’s sobs had subdued. His arms were still around him.

“I don’t wanna kick you out of your own bed.”

“No, that’s okay. The couch’s pretty comfortable, really.”

“We can both sleep there,” he offered, and cringed, sure he had sounded like a child.

“Okay,” Josh whispered back nonetheless. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here I am again! Two months later!
> 
> Please don't think I've abandoned this, this is actually the first fic I have full intentions and plans of finishing, I'm so invested in this story and I'm so excited to share it with you all. ALSO next chapter is gonna be *eyes emoji*
> 
> Again, let's all thank Anya (sdgwg on ao3) for her WONDERFUL job betaing this, I don't deserve her. 
> 
> Next chapter won't take two months to be posted I swear. Thank you all so so much for reading <3<3


	7. Chapter 7

“Ah, there he comes. The world’s sleepiest boy.”   
  
Tyler simpered apologetically at Josh as he walked barefoot into the kitchen, where Josh was cooking breakfast chirpily. He was nonchalantly shirtless, and had clearly just showered, if the large water beads that freckled across his bare shoulders were any sort of indicator.   
  
“You slept through everything I did this morning, I was so impressed,” Josh joked, and when he turned around from the pot he had been stirring, Tyler’s face burned up. He was hit with a sudden flashback of the night before when Josh helped him into one of his clean t-shirts so that he could sleep comfortably, right before Josh himself changed into cozy pants and climbed into bed next to him. Tyler couldn’t remember most of the night, but he did know Josh had been shirtless then as well.   
  
Now his whole body was on fire.   
  
“Have you been up for long?” He asked, hoping his embarrassment wasn’t translating into a blush.   
  
“Woke up around nine, went for a run, showered.” That really didn’t answer his question as he had no idea what time it was. He looked  around the kitchen and living area in the hope that he’d find his phone lying around and be able to check the time, but he couldn’t see it anywhere.   
  
“Do you know where my phone is?” His voice was raspy and groggy even after he attempted to clear his throat. He assumed that it was from all the crying.   
  
“Uh, I stashed it somewhere it wouldn’t wake you, it went off a couple of times,” Josh stammered as he produced the phone from the inside of a kitchen cabinet and handed it to its owner without meeting his eyes. “Sorry if that was dumb, I realize now it could’ve been an important call.”  
  
He turned it on. The numbers on the screen of his phone claimed it was only 11:02, which came as a huge relief to Tyler; he hadn’t completely and rudely overslept. He scrolled through his missed calls, and was oddly comforted to see Mark’s name displayed three times, along with a call from his mom and another from Madison. Josh had gone back to stirring whatever was inside the pot, and Tyler wished he’d turn around again so he could reassure him with a smile.  
  
“That’s okay, I think it was better for me to just sleep it off.”  
  
Josh nodded and moved to serve two plates of eggs and a dish that appeared to be tortilla chips with salsa, and set them down across each other on the tiny kitchen table, along with two cups of coffee. The mug he set in front of Tyler had a pretty pattern of pink watercolor flowers printed onto the ceramic . As Josh opened cupboards and drawers to retrieve cutlery and napkins, Tyler stared at his back and fantasized about chasing the water beads that stuck to his skin with the tips of his fingers, like raindrops against a car window.   
  
He wondered if that was rude, fantasizing about his friends. He wondered if he and Josh were friends.   
  
“Those are _chilaquiles_ ,” Josh announced, sitting in front of Tyler and beaming proudly. He’d surely caught him glaring at his plate, which he did in an effort to keep his eyes off Josh’s naked torso. 

“It’s just fried tortilla with salsa and cheese. Lupe taught me the recipe last month, it’s incredibly easy.”  
  
Tyler recognized the name as that of the owner of the _Taco Local_ truck across the street.   
  
“Oh. It looks good, thank you.” He waited for Josh to eat the first bite before trying some himself. It was warm, crunchy, and exactly what he needed to nurse his hangover. 

“I thought you weren’t much of a cook,” he voiced.  
  
“I’m not, but I figured you’d like to eat something.” Tyler hid his smile behind his coffee mug. 

“I’m sorry for all the trouble.”

Josh shook his head as he swallowed a bite. “No, no, it’s no trouble at all. You are the world’s best bed partner,” he said casually, and Tyler could feel even the tips of his ears heat up. 

They ate with the late morning light pouring through the curtains, with no further mentions of the events of the night before. Tyler blamed it all on the alcohol and decided to leave it at that, there was no reason to mull over it any further. He wasn’t about to dissect his feelings and thoughts like something that used to have a pulse.  
  
Josh gave him a spare toothbrush and a fresh towel, then let him use his shower. Before Tyler shut the bathroom door, Josh assured him that he’d be right outside. Tyler smiled at the comforting words, sure that Josh wasn’t even aware he was being considerate, he was just inherently kind.   
  
When he emerged from the shower he found Josh sitting cross legged on the living room floor with dozens of CDs surrounding him, thronging the carpet like a plastic sea.   
  
“I’ve never properly arranged these, I think it’s time.”   
  
Carefully, Tyler collected some of the cases into his arms to create a space where he could safely sit. He looked at the albums he’d picked up and asked Josh how he was organizing them so he could help as well. He chose to go by year of release, so together they created a music timeline.  
  
“Listen, uh, I have an afternoon shift at Oliver’s,” Josh announced as they were stashing the CD cases in the old wooden bookcase that doubled as TV stand for the old, boxy screen Tyler doubted even worked. “But you can stay here while I’m gone, if you’d like.”   
  
Tyler remained silent, but not because he didn’t want to stay. If anything he wanted the exact opposite. He hesitated because he was sure he must have become a nuisance by now, having slept over, cried all over Josh’s shirt, eaten and even showered in Josh’s apartment. The idea of being wanted there filled his heart, he could feel the persistent _ba-dump ba-dump_ of it against his ribs.   
  
If he were to think rationally, he’d decide to go back home, let his mom know that he was alive and accept Mark’s apology and excuses, whatever those might be. But he was past thinking rationally, all he wanted in that moment was to crawl back into bed –Josh’s bed– and sleep until his head no longer hurt and his mind no longer felt like it was about to short-circuit.   
  
“Yeah. Yes, that’d be nice, thanks.”  
  
As Josh was getting ready to leave, Tyler wrote his mom a short text message saying he probably wouldn’t be home until later that night, but that he was okay. Informing her of his whereabouts felt like too much, having lived away from his house for three years, but it made him feel better.   
  
After thinking about it, he changed “later” to “tomorrow” before sending the message.   
  
“I’ll be back around ten, I’ll hurry as much as I can,” Josh said, lingering at the door.   
           
“That’s okay, take your time.”  
  
When Josh finally closed the door behind him, Tyler let out a shaky breath and went straight to bed.   


*

  
  
The sheets tangled uncomfortably around Tyler’s legs, they lapped at his feet with persistent softness that drove him insane until he felt forced to kick both the sheets and blankets off the bed. That was better, he was sweating anyway.   
  
He tossed restlessly, attempting to sleep facing the ceiling, then the door and then face down with his cheek against the cool pillow. Nothing worked. Exasperated, he urged himself to inhale long and deep breaths, like a therapist had once suggested to  him years ago, when his insomnia had started. In for four counts, hold for seven, out in eight. On his third breath he he noticed that despite his nose being  partly buried into Josh’s pillow, he was breathing just fine. He kept inhaling, counting and exhaling, inhaling, counting and exhaling, until he realized he was gently rubbing against the mattress with little thrusts of his hips. His eyes opened in surprise at the realization, and his whole body went still.   
  
Groaning in mortification, he turned around and glared down at himself. He was slightly but undoubtedly hard. In Josh’s bed.  
  
Perched on the trees outside, the cicadas laughed at him with their shrill singing.   
  
He toyed with the dilemma in his mind. Should he ignore it? It was only growing worse with every excruciating second. Should he just listen to the screams of his body and get it over with?   
  
He was the runway train that hunted every American psychology student, unable to choose between two paths, both of which inevitably ended in blood. But he also was all the people stuck in the tracks, seconds away from being run over by the goddamn train.   
  
Closing his eyes and giving in, Tyler warily put his hand over his briefs and left it there for a couple of seconds, paralyzed with feeling. He could hear his pulse, his heart was beating so forcefully that he was almost afraid it would fail and stop entirely. His brows knitted together as he began to palm himself over the thin fabric, firmly enough to make his eyelashes flutter, and his breathing to hitch.  
  
He let his hand wander down and back up again a couple of times, still over his briefs. A minute later, he was completely and agonizingly hard. There was no going back. He slipped his fingers underneath the waistband of his underwear, and the feather-like brush of his knuckles against his dick pulled an actual whimper out of his mouth. It wasn’t long before he could feel the fabric of his briefs dampening where it brushed against the head of his dick, and although every single neuron of his brain was screaming for him to just jump off the train, he heedfully slid them down.   
  
The fingertips of his left hand roamed the skin of his chest and belly as he grabbed himself with the other, his back arching off the bed ever so slightly. _Screw it_. He pumped his hand up and down in a steady rhythm, thumbing the slit of his dick just often enough for it to arouse a shiver in him every time he did. It was easy to get lost in the moment, and every time he forgot where he was, the smell of Josh’s shampoo and the sight of red bricks brought him back to the present, which, if he was being honest, gave it a hot, exhilarating edge in the most twisted way.   
  
Inhibitions lost, he teased his nipples with butterfly soft touches, then his collarbones, his neck, but when he got to his lips it was no longer his hand setting his skin ablaze, but Josh’s electric touch.   
  
As his breathing quickened and his movements turned desperate, visions of Josh flooded his mind. Josh between his legs, his tongue tracing the exact same path Tyler’s hand was; Josh on top of him, kissing him complaisant while their bodies melded together; Josh’s mouth against his neck as he jerked Tyler off.  
  
Even the fucking cicadas went quiet to listen as Vision Josh moaned his name when Tyler came. He rode his orgasm with a breathy whine and his back in an almost perfect crescent moon. He grabbed at the sheets, at the pillow, anything that could keep his body grounded as the whole world thrashed like a boat amidst a tempestuous sea. 

A couple of minutes passed and he didn’t stir, his body limp,  ghost fingers still hovering over his skin. 

  
*

  
Night fell. Tyler had slept through the sunset in damp underwear. He’d resorted to cleaning himself with his briefs after coming all over his chest, and then he’d had to wash those briefs in the bathroom sink, and dry them off using a hair dryer he found in a drawer next to a a cluster of hair products.   
  
Josh arrived home at exactly 10:10 while Tyler was washing the dishes of the small dinner he’d put together with the limited ingredients that occupied Josh’s fridge.   
  
“Shoot, sorry, I only thought you might be hungry halfway through my shift.” He raised and bounced a plastic bag with the Oliver’s logo as if it were a white flag of surrender. “Brought you something just in case.”  
  
“That’s fine, I made myself a sandwich. Best guest ever, huh?” He joked, but he was certain it wouldn’t bother Josh.  
  
“I’m surprised you found enough food in this house to cook something,” he said as he put away the food he’d brought.  
  
Tyler watched him as he stretched his back and neck, eyes closed and lips just slightly parted. Like a surging river, thoughts of what he’d done hours earlier flooded his mind, and he couldn’t stop himself from blushing. He cringed ever so slightly and busied himself with the task of drying the dishes, grateful he could avoid Josh’s gaze for at least a couple of seconds and compose himself.   
  
But suddenly Josh was there, putting a hand on top of his to stop him from drying the dishes he’d washed.   
  
“Leave it, it’s okay.” Tyler could only blink at him and nod.   
  
Josh announced that he needed a shower, and that he’d be out in a second. Tyler’s curious gaze had already roamed through all the shelves and nooks in the apartment, so he settled on lounging on the living room couch to wait silently. As the sounds of Josh’s shower came to life, he imagined what it would be like getting used to that sound, and all the others in this small apartment. He imagined they would all feel like a beginning, something he had yearned for all his life. A beginning that felt like a new day.   
  
Emerging from the bathroom with a cloud of warm fog surrounding him, Josh called Tyler’s name.   
  
“Would you do me a favor?” He wore nothing but a towel around his waist, and held a small carton box in his hand that Tyler recognized as one of the hair dye boxes that he’d seen in one of the bathroom drawers. “Can you help me touch up my hair? I just washed off most of the color, I think. Had to get rid of that french fry smell.”   
  
“Yeah, of course. I’ve never, uh, dyed anybody’s hair, but if you tell me what to do…”  
  
“Oh, it’s really easy, you’ll see. Thank you.”  
  
Josh disappeared inside his room this time, closing the door behind him. There were a couple of shuffling noises, some drawers being open and shut that Tyler paid close attention to, and then he reappeared wearing a pair of rather baggy, low hanging pajama pants and the towel around his shoulders.   
  
He explained the procedure carefully and patiently, reassuring Tyler every few seconds that it would be incredibly simple. They brought one of the mismatched chairs from the dining table into the living room for Josh to sit on and set everything up. They both donned their gloves to prepare the dye and read the instructions, mostly just to calm Tyler’s nerves.   
  
With slightly trembling fingers, Tyler parted Josh’s hair as he had instructed. The color had just begun to fade, turning baby blue, and underneath the bleached tips Tyler could make out Josh’s real, chocolate brown natural hair color. The dyeing process was straightforward, as Josh had promised, and it was patience rather than skill that eased the task.  
  
“Have you been dyeing it for long?” Tyler inquired in a whisper. 

It was very late, and very quiet inside the apartment.  
  
“Since I moved here last year.” 

Tyler was taken aback for a second. Ever since he got to Willoughby both Zack and Mark had referred to Josh as ‘the New Kid’, but he’d been in town for over six months. That was a long time to be considered an outsider.   
  
“I didn’t know you’ve been here that long,” he admitted. He was working on the back of Josh’s head, so he couldn’t see his face as he answered.   
  
“Since September. I should’ve gone back to the community college I was attending,” he mused before letting out a breathy laugh. “But I ran away.”  
  
“You did?” Tyler somehow doubted that was true.   
  
“Nah, my parents are great, my whole family’s great. It wasn’t really an _escape_.” He gazed down at his lap and Tyler automatically pulled on the section of hair he’d been going over.   
  
“Sorry,” he said quickly, afraid he’d ruined the moment, but Josh went on.   
  
“I… mainly decided to move out and come here to rid my parents of the weight of caring for me, you know? I have two sisters and a brother, I guessed they had enough on their plate.”  
  
When even the curling baby hairs on the back of Josh’s neck had been coated in blue, Tyler couldn’t avoid working on the front any longer. He hesitantly shuffled around the chair until Josh’s face was inches away from his stomach. Tyler peered down at his half-dyed head and concentrated on the task at hand, running gentle fingers through his hair as Josh had demonstrated to section it.   
  
“I’m happy here, though,” he continued. “I like this shitty little apartment, I like my jobs, I like the smell of fresh water.”  
  
Tyler snorted. “You’ll grow to hate it.”  
  
“I’ll let you know when that happens.” There was a smile on his voice. “And I like the people. I like you.”  
  
In the silence that followed Josh’s words, the bottle spurted loudly and an electric blue blob landed on Tyler’s forearm. Softly, Josh grabbed his wrist and, with a gloved finger,  wiped the dye away in one fell swoop before discarding it on top of the makeshift coffee table.   
  
“I’m almost done,” Tyler murmured, lacking something intelligent to respond.  
  
Once the dye bottle ran empty, They set the timer in Josh’s phone to a half hour. From his seat, Josh grinned up at Tyler. The smile crinkles by his eyes were smeared with color.   
  
“Aren’t you proud?” Impossibly, his smile widened.  
  
“The proudest.” Tyler pulled his gloves off and set himself into a squatting position directly in front of Josh to look for spots he might have missed, but he’d actually done a pretty good job. When he raised his vision and his eyes met Josh’s, he was no longer smiling.   
  
In one slow movement, Josh pressed a gentle hand to Tyler’s neck and brought him forward as he too leaned in. Tyler couldn’t help glancing down at his lips and back up again. Josh’s face was closed, serious as he had never seen it.   
  
“Can I kiss you?” Josh asked.  
  
Tyler imagined then what it would look like if they were to kiss. He was awkwardly crouched in front of Josh, so he would have to crane his neck to close the distance between them, and Josh would still have to bend down to meet him halfway. Josh’s breath smelled like toothpaste, so the taste of mint might still linger on his lips. Tyler was holding his breath, so he would probably have to exhale mid-kiss.   
  
“Tyler?”   
  
It was all wrong.  
  
“No. No, I’m sorry. I need to…”  
  
It happened too quickly. Tyler snapped back into himself and looked around frantically for his things, which were all clumped together on the kitchen counter by the entrance. He crossed the room in a couple of resolute strides and gathered his belongings before heading straight for the door. He turned around to mutter a last apology, and realized Josh hadn’t moved, he was still sitting in the middle of the living room with his hair painted the color of sorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the bright side, May 9th is officially the last day of the semester and I'll be one step closer to my Dream JobTM. Unfortunately, that means I haven't been able to write/live a proper life for the last couple of weeks, with finals and all. But hey, this fic is still a thing!!
> 
> Wonderful, wonderful Anya's (sdgwg) still helping me beta this, even though she too is buried in work, bless her. 
> 
> Thank you SO MUCH for commenting, I can't even put into words how happyyyy it makes me.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW ALMOST THREE MONTHS THIS TIME

For a moment, it was all okay. Tyler opened his eyes underwater and let himself get lost in the opaque, stagnant calamity of pool-tile-blue. Submergence caused the surface’s muffled voices to closer resemble singing instead of casual conversation. The water, so blissfully cool against his skin, made it easy to pretend that he was anywhere else but stupid Willoughby, floating without a care in the world and letting his eyes flutter lazily. It was only when he realized that the dancing bubbles in front of him were his own breath escaping him that Tyler reluctantly decided to resurface.

“I can be here all day, but my skin will forever remain this freaking pale.”

Mark sat at the edge of the pool with approximately half a bottle of tanning oil glistening on his skin and his feet idly tapping at the water surface. It was now a late, busy morning at the public pool, but when they arrived it had been only Mark, Tyler and the tiny lifeguard.

Tyler offered Mark a tight smile and rested his arms on the edge of the pool next to him.

“I don’t think Ohio’s morning sun will do much to anybody’s skin,” he said, squinting up at the silhouette of his friend against the sun.

All it had taken for Tyler to forgive Mark for ditching him at Jamie Nichols’ party was to see him, really. He’d been a stammering mess when he’d apologized, and Tyler’s heart had melted for him when he explained how he had been so afraid to face his former classmates that, upon standing outside Nichols’s apartment and seeing the daunting number of people milling there, he decided not to go in.

“I was ready, I had my best shoes on,” Mark had said, looking at the ground and sounding dangerously close to tears.

Tyler understood, and it had all turned out just fine at the end. That was until he walked past the damn flower shop and its leering red brick walls 

“I curse you, Ohio morning sun!” Mark yelled, his face heavenwards, and a young woman with a toddler nearby glared at him. He grinned abashedly at her and waved at the little kid.

“I’m ready to leave,” Tyler announced as he hoisted himself out of the water.

“Thank God.” It only took Mark a couple of seconds to get up and gather their things.

The public showers were just as crowded as the pool, but Mark had to wash off the overly sweet smelling oil before putting his clothes back on, so it was half an hour before they were actually ready to leave. Mark silently guided them to the doughnut place they had agreed on having breakfast at –at least for the rest of the summer– instead of Oliver’s, and Tyler was so grateful for that he almost forgot about the dark cloud above his head for a second.

There were only so many businesses in Willoughby, and most colleges in the country had more students than that hot little town had inhabitants, so it was common occurrence for Tyler to know half of the faces he encountered when he went out. Still, that morning as he sat with Mark and nibbled at a cinnamon doughnut it came as a surprise to see Denis there. He’d never seen him anywhere other than at the Round About, at least not since he was a kid and dumb town meetings still were held at the small theatre down by the lake.

“Do you remember a time,” Tyler began, breaking the silence that had engulfed their table, “when Denis was something other than a hermit?”

Mark followed Tyler’s stare to where Denis sat alone at a corner table, then looked back at Tyler curiously.

“When we were children, maybe. I feel like good old Denis’ been like that since forever, though.” He chewed a bite of warm doughnut slowly, studying Tyler’s face. “Do you?”

“I think I remember a time when he was… happy. When my parents dragged me and Zack to those town meetings. 

With another glance at Denis, Mark sighed and shrugged. He made no further comment on Tyler’s sudden interest in Denis, he went straight back to finishing his strawberry filled breakfast while Tyler’s lay forgotten in his plate.

Jamie Nichols’ recent coming out did absolutely nothing to motivate Tyler to Live His Truth or follow any other cheesy self-help book titles, if anything it made him more anxious. Bit if Nichols was a twisted reflection of his current reality, Denis’ lethargic demeanor and lack of a family and friends made him feel like Tyler’s ghost of Christmas Yet to Come; a warning to strengthen the walls around him until he could get out of Willoughby and breathe again. Unless he wanted to end like him.

 

*

 

The route back home was direct and simple: take Erie St. all the way down toward the lake, make a sharp right and walk straight until you reach the Joseph’s two-storey, wooden, yellow ochre home. If you’re lucky enough, you will find yourself walking down Erie St. around 11 a.m., just when the sun’s rays begin to feel warm against your skin, enticing smells will waft around you from all the small restaurants preparing the day’s lunch, and little kids will climb on their bikes and race their friends all the way to Lake Erie and back –feats that they’ll recall easily and perfectly when they’re much older and much farther away from there. If you’re even luckier, the birds will still be singing, and Oliver’s will be packed and full of the weekend’s gossip.

As Tyler watched the kids and listened to the birds, he felt anything but lucky. He walked past Oliver’s quickly, making sure to walk on the opposite side of the street and avoid looking through the decal-decorated window.

“Tyler!” The male voice made him freeze mid step, but when he turned around he was relieved to see his brother, untying the knot that held his apron in place as he jogged toward him. “You’re almost as impossible to find as when you were at college, where have you been? 

“Just… Mark’s,” Tyler lied, glancing guiltily at the diner.

 “Okay, sketchy pants,” Zack laughed.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing, nothing.” Zack folded the apron roughly and took his hairnet off. “I’ll walk with you, boss sent me to get more bread,” he announced, already walking in the direction of the lake. Tyler sighed and followed him.

“Is he still sending you all the way to Flour Girl?”

The town restaurants were divided into two: those who got their fresh bread from Flour Girl, and those who got it from Fiona’s. Although Flour Girl, being located on the very edge of town, was more hassle, it was undeniable that it had an overall better selection than family-owned Fiona’s did. And the world’s best breadsticks.

“Yeah,“ Zack mumbled, annoyed. “But at least I get to walk away from the fryer smell for a while. I feel bad sometimes for leaving poor, innocent Josh all alone in there with the stench.”

Tyler remained silent, the casual use of Josh’s name in an ordinary conversation with his brother caused the weight of guilt that filled his stomach to deepen. It was paranoia, he knew, but he couldn’t help but feel that Zack knew something, that everybody knew something.

“He asked about you, by the way,” Zack continued, unconcerned. “Josh. But I didn’t know what to answer, he seemed, like, worried. I just said you were fine.”

Tyler nearly tripped and Zack laughed.

“Yeah I, uh, I saw him this weekend, did he tell you about that?” The sun was beginning to make the air feel thick with heat, and Tyler could feel his skin itch in anticipation of what Zack would say next.

“No, not really,” he said after considering the question for a couple of seconds. “He just asked me, you know, how you were. Did something happen?”

Two kids biked past them in a bubble of laughter and screams. They had reached the end of the commercial area and were shy of a mile away from the lake, where the two kids would most likely stop, out of breath, to fight over who’d gotten there first- only to race again all the way back to where they had started.

“Freaking kids are gonna kill somebody,” Tyler muttered in an attempt to stir the conversation away from that weekend entirely.

Zack barked a laugh and threw an amused look at Tyler. “You and I used to do that all the time, grandpa.”

“I mean, yeah, but we could’ve killed somebody then too,” he joked, thankful for the easy change of topic.

“It was the best though, the adrenaline of feeling like you were about to pedal right into the water.”

By the time they reached the lake they had discussed all the times Tyler had won their races, and the one time Zack did, when Tyler had been sick with the flu and Mrs. Joseph had taken their bikes away for a whole month when she found out.

“It was unfair of you to race me, you’re older than me, of course you’d win.” They had stopped at the last corner before the street ended, where Zack had to turn left to reach Flour Girl and Tyler would continue right towards home.

“We were the same height, shut up.” Zack snorted and Tyler shoved his shoulder. “See you at home for dinner?”

“Yeah, mom’ll be glad you remembered you have a home.” He received another shove. “Yeah, I’ll see you then. And hey,” Zack took a couple of steps backwards, ready to leave. “Please let Josh know you’re okay, he’s an anxious guy, you know?”

With that he finally turned around and walked away, swinging his Oliver’s apron in his hand like an old, tattered rag.

The children that had been racing hadn’t made their way back to Erie St. yet, Tyler realized as he too turned to continue walking. He stopped abruptly and looked around the small grassy beach for the kids, who were nowhere to be found. He looked back toward Erie St. and saw only a man making his way toward the lake. Soon after this observation, he recognized him as Denis, surely making his way back to The Round About, which was in the same general direction as Flour Girl. When he was close enough, Denis squinted at him.

“You’re friends with the blue haired boy, aren’t you?” He said immediately, pleasantries be damned.

“Uh, yes, sir.” Tyler wasn’t usually so polite, but there was something about Denis’s serious, severe demeanor that made him want to tuck his shirt into his pants and run his hands through his hair to tighten it.

Denis scoffed and muttered Tyler’s last word. “You think you can give him something for me? He was supposed to come by Saturday morning to arrange some things but never showed up,” as he talked he kept walking, forcing Tyler to walk after him. 

Tyler knew Denis wasn’t giving him an option, he hadn’t even turned around to see if Tyler was following him to take whatever Denis wanted Josh to have. Blue haired boy, he’d called him, he hadn’t even used Josh’s name. As they made their way to The Round About without further conversation, Tyler came to the embarrassing conclusion that Josh had probably failed to show up to help Denis that morning since he was nursing Tyler’s hangover with homemade Mexican food.

“First pay and the kid doesn’t even show up to pick it up,” Denis complained as he pushed the door to the store open, apparently unconcerned about having left his business completely alone and unlocked as he went out to get breakfast.

“I’m sure there was a reason,” Tyler argued weakly, receiving a nasty glance from Denis.

“Maybe. Anyway, here, give this to him,” Denis thrusted a shabby looking envelope in Tyler’s hands before striding quickly toward the beaded curtain that separated the store from his house. “If he comes here complaining about not receiving his paycheck, then…” he left that sentence hang in the air with an accusatory finger pointed at Tyler.

“Yes, sir,” once more, that was all Tyler could say. And once more, Denis scoffed.

“Thank you,” he mumbled as he disappeared to the back of the store.

The speakers whispered soft static as Tyler sighed and left The Round About with Josh’s envelope tucked inside his pocket.

 

*

 

 _All songs are about love_ , his sister had said. 

Tyler stared at blank sheet that he’d stolen from his mom’s overly organized office supplies drawer. The white absoluteness of the paper mocked him by silently demanding ghostly love song lyrics in his own handwriting that had no place among the rest of his songs. Ultimately and truthfully, the sheet was empty.

 _Or_ , _lack of love_.

It was not _nothing_ that he felt, he knew, but he felt as if though there was a comical, hominid-shaped hole punched through a wall. As if he had the knowledge of possessing an empty something that may or may not need to be filled, that may or may not be lacking something. Lack-of-love-songs. But as he stared at the paper and bullied words out of his jumbled brain to create something, it was only the envelope sitting heavy on his bed that he could think of. Was that lack of love as well?

“Fuck,” he whispered angrily, tempted to crumple the piece of paper despite not having written anything on it.

  

Promptly at six, Mrs. Joseph called the family for dinner, proudly announcing that Madison had cooked most of it and standing by her words even after Madison insisted almost frantically she had only chopped the vegetables. Mrs. Joseph asked Tyler to say grace, and Mr. Joseph joked that having him there was almost a blessing since he’d been MIA all weekend, for which he received a slap in the arm from his wife.

“Madison, why don’t you tell your brother about what you did this weekend?” Mr. Joseph prompted after the regulatory fight over the first scoop of the Josephs’ signature mashed potatoes, drenched in melted butter and decorated with freshly ground peppers.

“It was nothing,” she answered coyly, looking down at her plate and pretending to assess the meat.

“She did a headstand, she was upside down for, like, an hour,” Zack said around a mouthful of a bit of everything that he’d served on his plate.

“Not an hour, but you managed a good five minutes, huh?” Mrs. Joseph ran a gentle hand through Madison’s hair. “Isn’t that great, Tyler?”

To Tyler, it appeared his parents had forgotten who he was. His mom knew how much Madison hated being fawned over, especially when Tyler was around. Madison herself knew that amongst all her siblings it was, and always would be, Tyler who cheered and supported her most genuinely. Tyler wanted to tell them it was fine, that he was still the same person and that they didn’t have to try so hard to pull him into the family dynamic like an outsider turned relative. 

“Mom, that’s okay,” Madison urged in a whisper when Mrs. Joseph question didn’t get an answer.

“No!” Tyler said hastily, causing a moment of silence to follow. “No, I mean, that _is_ awesome. I don’t think any of us here can hold a headstand for five minutes. 

“I can’t even do a headstand,” Zack said, yet again, with his mouth full. 

“Show me later?” Tyler looked Madison in the eye and smiled, and her now rosy cheeks squished up to allow a full, indulgent smile.

The conversation was smoother from then on. Tyler made an effort to contribute to the talk as much as he could, and it wasn’t long before he didn’t have to actively think about how much he was supposed to talk, or what he was expected to say. An hour later, Madison and Zack could barely contain their full-bellied yawns, and Mrs. Joseph was one glass of wine away from pulling out the Monopoly game they’d had since Tyler was three. She was almost as good at Monopoly as Mr. Joseph was at UNO, a game that knew no other victor in the Joseph household but himself.

“Kids, put your dishes in the sink, I’ll wash them tonight.”

Tyler happily did as his dad had instructed and went to sit back at the dining table. Both Zack and Madison made a beeline to the living room where they collapsed into the couch side by side like synchronized swimmers.

“Look at your children,” Mr. Joseph whispered to his wife, who covered a giggle with her half empty glass.

“They’re so tired from _eating_ ,” she said, face red from stifled laughter. 

Tyler felt like an intruder in their conversation, but was too fond of the whole picture to leave. He closed his eyes and rested his head on the back of the chair, noticing how the smell of old wood had been covered by that of rosemary, garlic and warm bread. 

“The food was delicious, thank you,” Mr. Joseph said, getting up from the table to wash the dishes.

Mrs. Joseph laughed once more and sighed.

“He says that about everything I make.” She finished her glass of wine and inspected the red tinted bottom, swishing the remaining drops around. Tyler suspected she was musing to himself rather than talking to him. “I try asking him what he wants for dinner every once in a while, even when we’re eating out, but all he says is ‘I like whatever you like. I’ll have whatever you recommend me.’” 

The familiarity of those words pulled Tyler out of his own thoughts so suddenly he sat upright and stared at the chair his moms had just vacated to help her husband with the dishes.

_I’m looking for whatever you’ll recommend me._

Before he could process what he was doing, Tyler sent Josh a text.

 

* 

 

“Hello?”

Tyler considered throwing his phone out of the window. The weight of it had threatened to burn a hole in his pocket after sending Josh nothing else but a vague “call me when you can.” A call that he now, upon hearing his shaky voice, realized had only further worried an already anxious Josh.

“Hey, Josh, it’s me.” God. Damn it.

“Hey, yeah, I know. I called you.” Tyler could only feel him getting more nervous, which only made _himself_ nervous.

“Sorry. I, um, I saw Denis today, he asked me to give your… your paycheck.”

It was not late, barely 8pm, but he felt a shiver run through his body as if it were suddenly very cold, and all the little hairs on his arms stood up at once.

“You saw Denis? Like, at The Round About?”

“No, he was actually having breakfast at A Dozen Doughnuts,” Tyler explained, walking in circles in his room in an attempt to keep his body from shivering. At least having the phone against his ear kept him from shaking his hand like he did when he was feeling especially jumpy. Like right at that moment. 

“Oh,” was all Josh allowed.

“That’s not actually where we spoke, though,” Tyler rambled on. “I walked all the way to the lake and he was there too, and he asked me if I knew you, and I said yes, and he just made me walk to his place with him, and yeah, he gave me your money.”

“Thank you, I can stop by your place to get it whenever you’re free,” Josh’s words were soft, almost murmured, and Tyler could picture him in that cluttered apartment, sitting on his worn out couch or laying on his bed with his feet propped up against the wall by the head of his mattress.

“I can just drop it off sometime, if you want.” Tyler stopped walking then, in the middle of his room, and closed his eyes shut.

“That’s okay, I don’t wanna bother you-”

“No, that’s fine. Are you home now? I can be there in, like, ten minutes.”

Josh breathed a laugh, and Tyler’s face relaxed. There were tears in the corners of his eyes when he opened them and, well, so much for songs about the lack of love.

 

*

 

From the very back of the garage, among beat-up toys and and Mr. Joseph’s clubs from his bygone golfing days, sat the bike that Tyler used to ride during past summers to commute to the very job Zack had now . Its wheels were flat and the handles were speckled with rust, but it wasn’t anything he couldn’t  fix quickly with what was already in the garage.

Minutes after hanging up with Josh, he was on his way to his apartment on a hastily fixed bike. The streets were ghostly-quiet in the residential area, something very common in that part of town, but he could spot a few people dotted around on the busier streets. Tyler greeted some of the familiar faces but mainly looked up at the trees and farther up at the stars as he pedaled through town.

There weren’t any bike racks near Josh’s building, so Tyler left his resting against the wall, positive that nobody in close-knitted Willoughby would be dumb enough to steal from a neighbor.

Among the list of faded names next to the six doorbells of the building, _DUN_ stood out  in clear, bolded letters. The name that had been added most recently. Tyler rang the doorbell and, immediately, a loud buzzing sound announced his permission to enter.

"Come on in, I’m making coffee.” Josh’s door was open when Tyler reached his floor, casting the warm light from the inside into the narrow hallway.  
  
Tyler said a quiet thank you and closed the door behind him. His hands were clammy and his breathing uneven, which he blamed on the effort of the ride. Of course.

“Do you want some?” Josh asked, his attitude as tranquil as ever, as he turned the coffeemaker off and filled the pink floral cup Tyler had drank from a few days ago.  
  
“No, thanks. If I drink coffee now I won’t be getting any sleep.”

“Same, but sleep is for the weak.” Josh grinned and took a small sip of the steaming coffee. “Not really though, this is decaf.”

The kitchen counters were quite short, probably due to the cheap design and build of the apartment, so it was easy for Tyler to hop onto one of them. He carefully pushed the coffeemaker a bit back so he wouldn’t knock it over by accident.

“Why drink it then?”  
  
“I was just a bit anxious, had to do something with my hands,” Josh casually admitted with a shrug. “And I couldn’t go for my usual de-stress run since you were coming over.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I can just leave your money and-“

Tyler felt a swift wave of guilt wash over him and went to get off the counter, but Josh was quick to stop him with a hand on his shoulder.

"No! Not what I meant,” he said, and Tyler remained seated. “You, uh, you coming over was what had me anxious.”

His cup forgotten, Josh ran a finger back and forth over a small piece of laminated wood that had come loose off the counter. And in the soft lighting of the room and faint smell of coffee in the air, it suddenly hit Tyler: Josh had tried to kiss him. Josh was into him. He had jacked off in Josh’s bed while thinking about him, and Josh was into him.

He was into Josh too, he liked him so much he was scared of ending up like Denis. Although he hadn’t yet sorted those thoughts.

Since Tyler had remained silent, Josh cleared his throat and took a step back, visibly hurt. He was still close enough to reach, so that’s what Tyler did. He took Josh by the arm before he could get any farther.

“I’m very nervous, too.”

Josh laughed out his relief and stepped closer, practically standing between Tyler’s legs, but his face remained downcast. From his vantage point on top of the counter, Tyler could make out tiny freckles scattered through Josh’s face, especially on the tops on his cheeks, and the exact spot where his nose dented down to end on a wide tip.  
  
It was a surprise for Tyler to see that his hand wasn’t shaking as he reached for one of Josh’s hoodie drawstrings. He pulled on it gently and fidgeted with the plastic tip. Josh’s head was still down, which gave Tyler the nerve to slide up his hand to cup Josh’s face, and the tips of his fingers brushed against his ear. If Josh had looked up, maybe Tyler would have stopped.

But Josh’s eyes were closed as Tyler leaned in.

It was far from awkward, Tyler thought idly, despite having to bend down, and the taste of coffee that still lingered in Josh’s lips, and the small breath that he had to release through his nose because he had forgotten to breathe. Josh’s lips weren’t soft against his own, and he doubted his were any better, but Josh put a hand on his thigh and Tyler couldn’t think of anything wrong with their kiss. Another hand, this time on the back of his neck, and he couldn’t think of anything at all.  

Maybe Tyler had pulled him forward, or it might have been Josh stepping closer on his own accord, in any case they were now melded together at the chest, Josh’s hummingbird heartbeat against Tyler’s. Taking advantage of the closeness, Tyler slid his arms around Josh’s neck, hungry for the feeling of Josh’s chemical-soft hair between his fingers. He controlled the kiss with small thrusts of his chin and tilts of his head, and Josh seemed happy to follow.

The kiss must have lasted a mere couple of seconds, but when they broke apart Tyler failed to remember what they were doing before kissing.

When they finally looked at each other Josh’s eyes squinted with an earnest smile, and something in Tyler jumped with such electrified exhilaration that he didn’t think twice about smiling back.

Josh stepped back, the reluctance clear in his slow movements, but Tyler didn’t step down from the counter. He watched as Josh grabbed the neglected mug and sipped at the now lukewarm coffee in silence.

“I asked your brother about you,” Josh said in such a low murmur Tyler was only aware he was talking because he had been staring at his lips. “Since the day I first saw you,” he confessed with a laugh.

Tyler didn’t want to hear the rest of it.

“He told me about your struggle to get accepted into college, and then how miserable you sounded whenever you spoke on the phone. He also said that, uh, that you’ve never dated, not one soul.”

In a matter of seconds, the feeling of delighted rapture that had knotted his stomach churned and morphed into a sharp anxiety that was stingingly oh-so-familiar to Tyler. He feared what might come next out of Josh’s mouth, even though it most likely wouldn’t be anything new to his mind.

_You’re not capable, are you?_

Of bringing walls down, of not building them in the first place, of letting people in, of unlatching your heart, of letting it be warmed, warmed, warmed into softness.

_Aren’t you cold?_

But Josh didn’t say any of that, not even with his eyes. And later Tyler would realize nobody would ever say that but himself, the face with blurred features that hid beneath his own and whispered vilely at him.

“So I don’t want you to feel like I’m intruding in your life, or forcing anything on you,” Josh continued, as if he hadn’t felt the way the very Earth had shaken moments ago. “I’m sorry if that’s how I’m coming off, if I’m making you feel uncomfortable or pressured or anything.”

“I’m not feeling much… of anything.” Tyler responded truthfully after a while and Josh nodded understandingly, and in that simple movement Tyler saw his own redemption.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your patience guys, I bet you've never had to wait for any fic to upload for so long T_T 
> 
> THE GOOD NEWS (for me) IS I GOT THE JOBBB I WAS TALKING ABOUT THE LAST TIME I UPDATED. That's why I've been so busy hehe. And I had to move cities and yeah It's been a crazy couple of months. by tHE WAY WHY DO YOU GUYS THINK OF THE NEW SONGS OMG
> 
> Thanks again to wonderful Anya (sdgwg) for helping me beta this!!!


	9. Chapter 9

Tyler was late. Which might have had something to do with the three different shirts that he tried on before walking out of the house, and the respective change of jogging shorts to match them. Whatever the reason, he was late. When he arrived at the corner of Glenn Ave. and Erie St., Josh was already there, jumping on the spot like a sugar-high kid. He wore his running attire effortlessly, while Tyler feared he might look like a 9th grader ready for P.E. class.

Josh smiled at him when he spotted him, and Tyler could have gone blind.

The night before, Tyler had fled Josh’s apartment with finger-shaped tingling spots in his body, a soft goodbye and, of course, a smile from Josh. When he got home, he received a text from Josh asking if he wanted to join him for his morning run the next morning, and Tyler was embarrassed of how fast he texted back a yes.  

“Hey,” Josh said, puffing out the warm shape of his breathing into the cold air.

As soon as Tyler got close enough, Josh reached out and gave his elbow a gentle squeeze 

“Hi.” Tyler gazed at Josh quickly before averting his eyes to the exact place where the sun was just beginning to rise, tinting the horizon gold.

“So, I’ll go slow,” Josh assured him, and Tyler bit the inside of his cheek, ashamed about being reminded of the words that the Josh from his fantasies sometimes whispered to him. “I know you’re not a runner, but you’ll like it.”

“I hope so,” Tyler said with a sheepish laugh.

“We’ll go down to Lakeview and run a mile or two there,” he explained as he gestured, casually using the town’s park name like any local would. “Then we’ll come back here, about 3 or 4 miles in total. I think that’s fair for a first-timer 

Tyler noticed that Josh’s smile crooked to one side slightly.

“Okay.” And maybe he sounded as apprehensive as he felt, because Josh chuckled and gently ruffled his hair. It was easy for Tyler to pretend that was a normal thing, that Josh’s hands on his body belonged there, that they have always had.

“Come on.”

And they were off.

Their sneakers hitting the pavement in a steady, comfortably slow rhythm was all the noise in the street for a while, their breathing still soft and controlled for the time being. Josh ran a couple of steps in front of Tyler, so he could see his relaxed profile and the skillful, practiced movements of his calves and thighs; he ran so smoothly, so swiftly Tyler knew he had been running for a long time. He was glad Josh had an outlet to his anxiety, he himself had never had anything that he could turn to when things began to feel too heavy.

Soon they were both panting, the cool air hitting the back of Tyler’s throat uncomfortably, but the park was visible now through the low hanging leaves of the trees surrounding them, which kept him going. July had just started, and most of the houses in Willoughby were getting ready for the patriotic festivities: star spangled flags adorned porches, grills had been cleaned, the smell of freshly cut grass drifted through the air. The whole town was ready to welcome friends and family for warm celebrations and skies exploding with tricolor pyrotechnics. 

With the scenery as distraction, Tyler didn’t even notice they had reached Lakeview, and it wasn’t hard to follow Josh’s steady pace around the park. The cool weather helped keep his shirt dry and fresh, and he was immensely thankful for that.

When they returned to the spot where they had begun circling the park, Josh slowed down to a cool down walk and waited for Tyler to catch up.

“You wanna sit down for a while?”

Tyler tried his best to appear nonchalant about the rest, but he was desperate for it.

“Sure.”

They collapsed side by side on the grass, dampening the back of their shorts with morning dew. Tyler laid on his back with a huff and stretched out his arms and legs until he resembled a star. Josh chuckled next to him, bringing his talons close to his pelvis and letting his knees fall to the sides in the butterfly position.

“That was good,” Tyler said through his panting, and he was happy he could say that and mean it.  

“You should stretch a bit,” Josh suggested, bending forward and making his feet and forehead meet.

But the grass was far too comfortable, soft and pillowlike underneath Tyler’s worn out limbs. He had closed his eyes, and when he opened them again Josh had changed positions, he’d stretched his legs out and was grabbing the tips of his sneakers with his hands, breathing into the stretch, eyes closed, ever-present smile in place. Tyler sat up and copied his movements. He could feel his body sighing as he eased the exercise out of his muscles.

“I hung up some posters at Oliver’s yesterday,” Josh said when he was done stretching, looking down at Tyler’s red face as he attempted fruitlessly to reach his sneakers with his hands. To imagine only four years ago he had been a part of a championship winning basketball team.

“Yeah?” Tyler prompted, the word punched from his gut with the effort of the stretch. 

“Advertisement for a town dance,” Josh said. He folded his arms behind his head and looked up at the now bright blue sky, the golden and pink tones having left it completely.

Every year, aside from the usual fireworks and bonfires and red-white-blue everything, Willoughby held a dance in the high school auditorium. The very same place Tyler had spent most of his afternoons in basketball practice, where he later received his high school diploma and swore on the spot never to return again. He had avoided attending the traditional town dance since he was fifteen, always in the grounds of complex excuses since his whole family was rather fond of the whole ordeal.

And it wasn’t even a dance, really. It was more like a place to meet after all the fireworks had been set off, and all the food had been eaten, and all the little kids were begging their mothers to please let them be excused from forced time with the grown-ups so they could hang out with the other equally desperate children. Also, most of the town was tipsy with beers and Lambrusco wines from plastic portable coolers.

All in all, Tyler dreaded the event.

“Yeah, it… yeah.”

“What?” Josh chuckled.

Tyler reincorporated himself from the painful stretch and glanced down at Josh’s stretched out form. He was staring back at him curiously.

“I haven’t been to any of those dances since I was a high school freshman, but I used to go all the time. The whole town’s there. Which, I mean, you’re probably used to that by now since you work at Oliver’s, but it’s just so many people in such an enclosed space, and-”

With a hand to his lower back, Josh cut Tyler right in the middle of his rant. Tyler thought his body was already burning from the run, but the weight of Josh’s hand on the very same spot it had touched yesterday set his skin ablaze. He glanced back at Josh, who quickly took his hand away. Tyler immediately wanted it back on him.

“I know what you mean, other than going to work and running, I don’t really get out much, so I don’t know that many people, you know?”

Tyler hummed in response.

“Everybody still refers to me as ‘the new kid’,” Josh continued, casually placing his hand on Tyler’s back again and playing with the fabric of his shirt. “And it’s so weird ‘cause they all know each other, how does that even work? 

“There’s less than eight thousand people in here, there are stadiums that could fit three Willoughbys.”

“Oh, we should go to a concert.”

“You’re getting off topic.” It was Tyler’s time to chuckle. 

“The point is… I wanna take you to that dance. No, wait, I want you to take me to that dance.”

Tyler’s stomach did a flip, and his mind went through every possible answer to that in the time it took for him to glance down at Josh.

“It’s not prom.” His voice came out in a broken croak.

Josh breathed out a faint laugh and kept quiet for a while, and Tyler knew he had screwed up. He needed Josh to tell him that it was okay, that he’d forget all about the stupid dance and would like to hang out at his apartment instead, where it was warm and safe and clean and everything shone gold.

“We can go if you want,” Tyler conceded long after Josh had stopped grabbing at his shirt and he was able to think straight again.

And apparently Josh knew Tyler was staring at his face again because he smiled with his eyes still closed. He sat up and mirrored Tyler’s body, their arms and thighs flush against each other’s.

It was a relief to hear Josh whisper that they didn’t have to.

 

For the whole walk back to Erie St. Josh argued he didn’t want to force Tyler into taking him to the dance, all he wanted was to be with him wherever that might be. Tyler wished he could tell him that he’d endure as many dumb gatherings as the town council could come up with as long as they could spend time together, but he could feel his palms beginning to sweat at the prospect of the whole town seeing them together.

“You’re one moody human being today,” was Maddison’s way of greeting Tyler when he arrived home and collapsed on the couch next to her. 

“Just hungry,” he mumbled.

“Was that Josh?” She asked, her expressionless face buried in a book Tyler was pretty sure was his.

“Where you spying me through the window? And how do you even know Josh?” He groaned, positive that he’d never have the upper hand when it came to Maddison, and trying to hide something from her would prove fruitless.

“He works at Oliver’s, of course I know him,” she scoffed.

Tyler let his head hang back until it hit the cushions. Was he about to discuss his love life with his sister? _Did_ he have a love life? 

“Well if you know it was Josh why are you asking?”

And that was it, he knew the confession had just escaped his lips. It was exhilarating, he felt as if he had to shake all his limbs to release the energy that had been building up in his body the past weeks. Hopefully Maddison would read into his answer as much as he had meant to convey in it, because as badly as he wanted to keep whatever he and Josh had a secret, the relief of telling someone was a liberation he didn’t know he needed.

“Why are you hiding Josh?” Maddison had the tiniest smirk now, even though her eyes were still scanning the words before her.

“I’m-I’m not, Josh and I… Mad, what are you saying?”

A full giggle escaped Maddison this time, and she finally closed her book. “Listen to yourself. Oh, and I didn’t even have to do anything!”

Tyler let his head hang to the side to look at his sister, whose grin grew until she was openly laughing, and although Tyler supposed he should be mad, he too laughed. Their eyes squinted as they looked at each other and laughed, and soon Tyler’s eyes filled with tears. As they began to flow, his chuckles turned into sobs and his breathing into sniffles until it became impossible to pretend he wasn’t crying.

“I don’t know what to do.” He used his sleeves to wipe at his face. Maddison didn’t immediately answer, and Tyler didn’t say anything else. His eyes continued to hurt the more he wiped at them, the humid air stinging out more tears. He idly wondered if he’d always cried this easily. When was the last time he’d cry this much?

“You keep talking and hanging out with him, dummy, that’s what people do in these situations.”

“What… for?”

The wood panels creaked underneath Maddison’s as she sat up and stomped her bare feet on the floor. “What do you mean what _for_?”

“I’ve never dated anyone in my life, and I don’t even know if I have those feelings for Josh.” He looked pathetic, he knew, blotchy eyes and twitching fingers as he talked about his goddamn crush like a fourteen year old. Actually, no, even a fourteen year would know what to do, wouldn’t have a panic attack at the mere thought of holding someone’s hand in public.

“I think I need some time.”

Maddison’s face grew softer and she sighed, relaxing back into her reading position. Only the outside world seemed to keep moving, the Joseph’s living room remained still and silent for so long Tyler thought he had imagined the whole conversation.

“Time won’t tell you what you do or don’t feel, Ty. That’s your job.”

 

*

 

It was Mrs. Joseph’s duty every four weeks to go over the donations made to the church and inventory every piece of clothing, toy, book, and blanket that were then sent to all the Catholic charities that line the coast of Lake Erie all the way to Cleveland. She enjoyed the task, the smell of once-loved items and the feeling of pride for her community that filled her belly.

Every once in a while, Janis Lester popped her head into the room where Mrs. Joseph was working, always offering something sweet. Mrs. Joseph was not even half way through her inventory and she’d already accepted a cappuccino, a perfectly ripe plum, and two cookies. Janis was head of the church volunteer committee, and Mrs. Joseph liked her okay. She let her play Fleetwood Mac as she worked, and the sweet treats, if a bit southern, were always welcomed. There was something, however, that unnerved her about Janis, but she couldn’t quite punt her finger on it. 

The donations that the church received had to be classified into categories, then put into boxes with the proper and exact labels and held in storage until the collecting truck stopped by in Willoughby. The closet where they kept the boxes was a tiny and unlit room adjacent to where Mrs. Joseph had been working, and that was where she was when three women walked into the main room. She was done with her work, but she knew that getting involved in a four-way women conversation in church meant staying an extra half hour, so she stayed in the closet and spied through the door window. She recognized the women as parents of some of either Zack’s or Tyler’s schoolmates, it had been so long since she had been involved in PTA meetings that their faces were all beginning to blur and merge.

“Poor Janis, honestly,” one of them was saying in what sounded like a sincere tone. “You can really tell she’s having a hard time."

“Poor _child_ , Bethany,” another one said with a sigh. “He’s gay, not a murderer. Janis didn’t have to kick him out like that.”

“He was over eighteen, though.” They kept talking, unaware of Mrs. Joseph. “I mean yeah, poor kid, but he’ll do okay. He has an apartment already, I hear.”

“Well yeah, one that he pays for selling drugs or something,” the first one said.

“Don’t be so mean, you don’t even know that.” 

“All I’m saying is that kid needs God. Janis did good by separating herself and her other kids from him, imagine living with that… bad energy tainting your family and home.”

“She took his family away, was what she did. What if _your_ son was gay?”

Her only answer was three knocks on one of the tables where the donations lay, and a scoff. The rest of the conversation was lost to Mrs. Joseph as the three women left the room.

When she was sure she was on the clear, she stepped into the main room again. A small black bag was now on the table they had been talking around, and she quietly inventoried that as well.

When her husband picked her up a couple of minutes later she smiled absentmindedly at him and kissed his cheek, silently settling in the passenger seat with her bag on her lap. He glanced at her a couple of times during the short ride home, but she kept staring forward and fiddling with her purse zipper.

“Bad donation season?” Mr. Joseph finally said, putting a hand on his wife’s leg.

“I just- I love my kids so much.” It was normal for her to burst in tears lately, she had just hit menopause and the whole family knew it. She’d cry watching day television, cleaning the garage and finding toys from 1996, receiving calls from Tyler after he moved away for college. But it didn’t make it easier for Mr. Joseph to see her cry, and every time it tugged at his heart until it chipped a bit.

“I love them too, aren’t they great?” He said encouragingly, letting her cry it out.

“I don’t want them to keep moving away,” she continued between sobs and sniffs.

“I’ll ask Tyler to move back in, hm?” 

“Please,” she laughed softly through her tears. She knew he was joking, but in that moment, she wanted nothing more. “Please.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cAN YOU BELIEVE ME? 4 MONTHS? 
> 
> If you're still reading this, an infinite thank you. I've been working at this hotel for the past couple of months, and I honest to God put in like 60 hours a week, barely have time to shower sighhh. But I still love this story and care for it deeply, so I guess I'm still working on it and posting it for myself more than anything else :P
> 
> Also, this chapter wasn't beta read, so I'm sorry for any mistake I might've made hehe.


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